I am tickled by the prospect of Scotland launching the UK's first Masters degree in gastronomy.

Queen Margaret University in Musselburgh has agreed five-year funding with the Scottish Government to support 12 full-time places on the one-year MSc course, which begins next January.

It's open to students who live in Scotland and the EU; the fee for unfunded places is £8200, rising to £10,420 for international students. Expensive, yes, but perhaps that's an indication of how seriously the subject is considered. The course is already oversubscribed, with the vast majority of applicants from Scotland. QMU is still accepting applications for the second intake, starting in September 2014.

Subjects to be covered will include the anthropology, ethnobiology and cultural traditions of food; the scientific aspects of food, such as taste, nutrition and digestion; ecosystems, botany and agriculture; how food gets to market (including the environ-mental impact of agriculture); and - crucially, because it differentiates this gastronomy course from those in Italy and the US - how eating habits are formed by communication, and how those with an understanding of the food system use that knowledge to change our eating habits for the better, or purely for economic gain.

If your first reaction is to snigger, that's perhaps understandable. Linking gastronomy with Scotland is to some an oxymoronic joke, for while the country's natural larder is celebrated around the world, it also seems unable to shake off a particularly unsavoury monkey from its back: the one that reminds us we're the third highest in the OECD countries for obesity and diet-related disease. Only the US and Mexico have higher levels.

The latest annual Scottish Health Survey, released last month, shows there has been no significant change in the proportion of adults or children consuming the recommended daily intake of five or more portions of fruit and vegetables (the mean portion consumption was 3.1 in 2003 and 2012). Neither has there been significant change in activity levels in recent years. The proportion of adults classified as obese has increased significantly since 1995 (from 17.2% to 26.1%) and the number of overweight people has also risen. Some 46% of adults reported having a long-term health condition, and one-third had a long-term condition that limited their daily activities in some way. A quarter of men and 18% of women drank alcohol at hazardous or harmful levels in 2012.

There is, however, cause for optimism, as obesity levels have stabilised since 2008, and hazardous or harmful alcohol consumption is down dramatically from 33% for men and 23% for women.

Pioneering educational work is ongoing, but it seems that while the Scottish food industry is flourishing, with exports reaching record-breaking levels and domestic consumption of local food on the up, poor eating choices remain stubbornly prevalent in some parts of the country.

A report on the Glasgow Effect contained in the 2010 Scottish Health Survey underlined that Scotland still had the highest mortality rate in western Europe among the working age population. Deprivation is one factor, but it's not the only one. Premature deaths in Glasgow were more than 30% higher than in Liverpool or Manchester, in both deprived and non-deprived neighbourhoods.

Research is ongoing into the perplexing condundrum that those born in Scotland who live in England and Wales die younger than those born in England and Wales, and those born in England and Wales but living in Scotland have a lower mortality rate than those born here.

I put all this to Bernard Quinn, programme leader on the MSc in gastronomy at QMU. His response was as honest as it was thought-provoking. It is indeed a paradox, he concurred, that while Scotland enjoys one of the best natural larders in the world, the ordinary man in the street seems to have missed out.

The ancient food knowledge that used to be passed down from generation to generation has been lost, and there's now a deep disconnect with the food we eat. Quinn cites the recent example of QMU students mounting a cookery demonstration at a local sporting event: two female servers in their mid-20s did not recognise a poached salmon and had to ask what it was.

The very reason this course is being funded in the first place is because it addresses the Scottish Government's desire to develop its national food and drink strategy. All applicants interviewed so far - and to reach this stage they must already work in the food industry or have a demonstrable interest in it - have stated they want to do something to crack the nut, as it were, and are passionate about trying to make a difference.

If they can get to grips with the reasons behind the great Scottish paradox, perhaps there's hope for all of us.