Ollie Smith the fast-improving Leicester centre is another contender albeit a distant one

Ollie Smith, the fast-improving Leicester centre, is another contender, albeit a distant one.France, who face the wrath of a very decent Ireland side in Dublin on Saturday, will be led by Fabien Pelous, the Toulouse lock, in the absence of the injured Fabien Galthi?”The last time I captained the team, we lost to England in the 2001 match,” Pelous said yesterday. “The team played badly, and the captain was not a good captain. This time, my priority will be to lead from the front.”Meanwhile, another Tricolore absentee, the Stade Fran?s prop Pieter de Villiers, faces a French Federation anti-doping commission in Paris tomorrow, charged with bringing the game into disrepute by testing positive for cocaine and ecstasy. “I have confidence for the future, but whatever happens, the Six Nations is over for me,” said De Villiers, who claims his drink was spiked during an after-match visit to a night-club.Martin Leslie has been ruled out of Scotland’s Six Nations meeting with Wales at Murrayfield on Saturday, enabling Scott Murray to return to the squad after being dropped last week. Leslie injured his shoulder and neck during training on Friday and was told yesterday that he needs a month’s rest.. The beleaguered shopper is in need of help. Assailed by food products with labels claiming to “boost the immune system”, “protect the heart” or promote “natural relaxation”, consumers do not know which supermarket aisle to turn to

The beleaguered shopper is in need of help.

Now the European Commission is coming to the aid of the consumer with proposals for tough curbs on food labelling. The aim is to bring order to the High Street and help shoppers choose a healthy diet in the face of rocketing rates of obesity, increasing food scares, and the growing interest in food products that claim to have a beneficial effect.Revised draft proposals to be published in Brussels this month are expected to ban companies from claiming products promote health or wellbeing in a general way or that they improve concentration or mood. Slimming products and foods that claim to help with weight loss will also be targeted, and references to the advice of doctors are likely to be prohibited.Officials and MEPs say the problem of misleading claims in now widespread. A commission briefing document says: “Consumers have the right to know what they get from a product they buy. If one takes a stroll in a supermarket one will find many examples to the contrary.

For example, claims such as ‘excellent for your organism’, or ‘helps your body resist stress’, are vague and often meaningless and difficult to verify. Unfortunately, certain claims are even factually incorrect, for example, “Eat all you want; this will halve your energy intakes”.The clampdown on food claims backed by consumer groups has provoked queasiness in the food industry. The UK Consumer Association survey last month exposed products that make health claims and highlighted the lack of control on them. The first category proposed covers claims such as “full of fibre”, “low in sodium”, “sugar-free” or “fat-free”. Here the commission wants to introduce strict definitions of what standards should be met to justify these claims.Under the proposals, “low-fat” products would have to contain no more than 3g of fat per 100g, or 1.5g per 100ml. “Fat-free” products would have to have no more than 0.5 per cent fat per 100g or 100ml.The regulation would also ban one category of claim which, while strictly accurate, is grossly misleading. Under this heading come items including yoghurts sold as “90 per cent fat-free” which, as officials point out, can be up to 10 per cent fat, a high fat content for most foods.A lighter regulatory regime would cover some general health claims.