A SURVEY released this morning says that one in four people is so baffled by official advice on healthy eating that they ignore it.

This is an amazing statistic because it means that three-quarters of people actually understand the advice we are bombarded with and try to live by it.

On Wednesday, the in-depth research into cancer prevention must have confused most of the nation.

Processed meat must be avoided at all costs, it said. You can imagine that the luncheon meat on the supermarkets' deli counters in which the teddy bear glows bright pink might not be too clever. You might even concede that bacon has a little too much fat.

But ham? Honest-to-goodness ham a carcinogen?

It's all in the curing and smoking, apparently.

But kippers - which are cured and smoked until they look (and taste) like the lungs of someone with a 60-a-day habit - are OK.

We are told to eat five portions of fruit and veg a day to stay healthy, but if you drink fruit juice you are doomed to cancer.

We are told to forswear all alcohol to avoid cancer, and yet it is good for the heart to drink one or two glasses of red wine a day.

All food contributes to liver and kidney cancer, so the logical conclusion is not to eat at all.

Only then you'd starve to death.

It is astonishing that our forefathers, who for generations did not have the benefit of this advice, ever lived long enough to pass on their genes to us.

The experts are in danger of messing up what should be a very simple message: be sensible.

It is not sensible to fill your lungs with smoke. It is not sensible to drink so much you are sick. It is not sensible to wobble about with excess weight on board. It is not sensible to stuff in fish and chips and never touch fresh fruit. It is not sensible to let your body clog up without any exercise.

But while being sensible, it is impossible to escape the inevitable. However minutely you follow the advice, you will one day die.

There is nothing more certain in life - except that Gordon Brown at the next Budget will introduce a ham tax and say it is for our own benefit.