Need people be lonely in the sunset of their lives? Britain's Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has called upon people to take more responsibility for their own health. He has also called for a new approach to the way that elderly people are cared for. The economic arguments are persuasive. Hunt states that smoking-related illnesses costs the NHS an estimated £2.7 billion a year. Type 2 diabetes - closely associated with being overweight - affects one in 16 of the adult population and costs the NHS £8 billion a year. Meanwhile, one in five children are leaving primary school clinically obese. In the case of the elderly, Hunt rightly notes that the task of caring is not getting any smaller. “By the end of this parliament,” he says, “we will have a million more over 70s, one third of them living alone.” He points to the “heroic army” of family carers and volunteers, before observing that caring for elderly family members will have to become as central to people's lives as