Government communications have improved immeasurably in my lifetime.

When I was young, pretty much everything originating from an official body had to be translated from a near-impenetrable Pathé News polysyllabic porridge. Somewhere along the line, someone grasped the novel notion that communications should actually, well, communicate, and with the help of the likes of the Plain English campaign, great progress has been made in making things accessible to people who don’t read a great deal. Which, let’s face it, is a lot of people.

So I was a bit surprised recently to come across (http://www.nhs.uk/chq/pages/1126.aspx?categoryid=51):

Two paras down you come to an explanation of Kcals and KJs which, with a bit of unpicking, lets you cross-refer back to the opening para and get to the answer you actually wanted when you arrived. In common parlance:

Typically:

• For a man – 2,500 a day
• For a woman – 2,000 a day

Why couldn’t they simply state that at the top, then move on to the caveats?