January 2, 2009 | weird news

With the New Year just hours old, instead of boozing it up with the rest of us, the Nanny State has been conspiring to issue an early morning wake up call to those of us who were sleeping off the remnants of 08 with a new campaign.

The idea is to “kickstart a lifestyle revolution for every family” by promoting healthy eating and exercise, and includes names you’d typically associate with ordering a pizza after midnight (or those typically part of a birthday spread for a hyperactive 8-year old) Coca Cola, Kellogg’s, Kraft, Mars and Nestle. [Please burn off some extra calories by clicking all over our site and particularly on our Coke Vitamin Water post]

People will be able to call a dedicated helpline and get advice from specially-trained nutrition and exercise advisers (who are doing toe calisthenics and butt clenches while you’re on hold) who will counsel against eating any products made by the aforementioned, unless compelled to sign some kind of release which includes not mentioning any of them by name.

New TV ads will be launched, comparing a time when kids risked attack from the neighborhood Rottweiler by fishing out balls from the neighbor’s yard, to one when the whole family gathered around the television to a diet of pizza and soda before kids retired to their rooms for 8-12 hours of gaming and the parents brought out the beer. [Please see our take on a delightful combination of the two, Pizza Flavored Beer]

Because Barack Obama and Sheryl Crow haven’t completely monopolized the term, this campaign is referred to as the cutesy Change4Life.

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is not ruling out further legislation if this three-year endeavor fails (or however long it takes for the funding to be cut by whatever government happens to be in power at the time).