A recent TV documentary criticised hospitals for selling food and drink high in saturated fat, salt and sugar on their premises. Some hospitals even had fast food outlets.

The criticism was that these institutions, which were supposed to be promoting health, were doing exactly the opposite.

The second purpose of hospitals is to treat illness, yet these hospitals were encouraging illness by allowing such food and drink to be sold there.

In fact, for some people, it would be seen as an endorsement of these products for they would assume that, because it was sold in a hospital, it must be healthy. Government must take some of the blame for allowing such a situation to exist.

The same can be said of sport and leisure centres. I always believed the emphasis at these places was on keeping fit.

Yet there are vending machines in all of them selling drinks with high levels of sugar and snacks with high saturated fat content (especially palm oil). Some also have high levels of caffeine.

Manufacturers seem to be deliberately encouraging a sweet tooth in children, which is well established by adulthood, thus giving them customers for life.

Again, government is to blame for not taking a stronger line.

Gil Osman, Shirehampton.