There is a secondary school near Professor John Frank's new Edinburgh home and every day the Canadian is greeted by the debris of walk-to-school snacks.
There is a secondary school near Professor John Frank's new Edinburgh home and every day the Canadian is greeted by the debris of walk-to-school snacks.
"There are hundreds of pounds of fast-food and candy wrappers on the street every morning," he says, a trace of bewilderment in his up-beat tone. "Parents are giving the children that money. Is that because they cannot say no when their children ask for cash? Can they not organise family life to buy a breakfast?"
He and I are in the middle of a discussion about the Scottish Government's free school meals policy.
As the head of a new unit set up to research which strategies will help improve the notoriously bad health of Scotland's most deprived, I am curious to know what he thinks of this latest gift from the SNP.
In response he says he wonders if a lot of unhealthy calories are being taken before pupils even reach the playground.
"It's a bit late by the time you come to serve school lunch," he says. "They have already had thousands of calories on the way to school."
How to catch people early in life, let alone the day, and steer them towards healthier choices is one of his key areas of interest as he takes on a challenge that has defeated many before him: how to close the gap in the health and life expectancy between the relatively affluent people of Scotland and the poor.
The team he is leading, The Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy, plans to tackle the problem by looking at different age groups, seeing what schemes could be tried to make a difference, and evaluating how they work.
Mr Frank gave up his job as scientific director of the Institute of Population and Public Health in Canada to take on the role, after beating off international competition, and he is enthusiastic about his daunting task.
He stresses we should not "give up" on people over a certain age but he often returns to the need to reach people young. For example, to really prevent pocket money disappearing over the sweetie counter he suggests discussion with parents when their children are at "kindergarten".
But focus on early years is about much more than breaking bad habits before they start.
Experts have shown that the weight and growth rate of babies can predict their risk of illnesses such as heart disease when they reach their 50s.
Mr Frank elaborates: "Some things you do in early life have a very long reach, so for example, we know now that the number of years of formal education you have actually confers protection against Alzheimer's.
"Of course we would like people to stay in schools so they get better jobs and become successful citizens ... it is also true that it will change their status as elderly people."
Nevertheless, he is an optimist. He does not believe people are doomed from day one.
You can, he tells me, change the IQ of children from disadvantaged homes through pre-school education programmes that do not so much focus on reading and writing, but on the disciplines of sitting still, listening and co-operating.
"Many kids have problems at kindergarten because they do not have those basic things you need to do well," he says.
"People are capable of doing better and going further in school and training," he says. "They do not reach their full potential. But there are studies showing it is correctable if you were able to bring in these sort of (pre-school) programmes.
"This is not my idea. It is well known to people in education, but what is not done is it is not tied to health outcomes."
Voila, the need for him and the research team he was imported to head.
Piloting such programmes, ensuring they are properly evaluated and turning the necessary cogs to introduce them more widely if they work is apparently not half as straightforward as it sounds.
Mr Frank says a report published in Scotland this summer showed there were many initiatives to give children from deprived backgrounds a boost early in life, but no-one had ever checked whether they were making a difference.
Teaming up staff running the projects with researchers seems to be part of the problem.
"You cannot expect a research funding agency to pay for the delivery costs," he says.
"You have to have a partnership with a lot of trust. People in these two parts of society do not go to work together every day. They work in different institutions, they have different languages."
The Medical Research Council and the chief scientist office of the Scottish Government has jointly funded Mr Frank's collaboration, investing £3.5m for the first five years.
This, he says, isn't enough to properly test new schemes either: "My budget only has seed money to develop interventions to this point."
Still, he is pretty confident about what is possible when the money is provided. Asked what one policy he would introduce tomorrow, he says: "I would eliminate child poverty in Scotland. It is not very expensive to do. You just have to bring up family income for two people per 1000 head of population."
Similarly, despite the failure of numerous public health strategies aiming to nudge the health of deprived communities nearer to that enjoyed by everyone else, he remains convinced people have enormous potential to change.
He explains: "Here you have a third of kids overweight. In Botswana, they have a third with HIV.
"One of these is completely reversible because as a child grows they can change enormously. Mother nature is extremely powerful. You just have to get a hold of calorie intake and your exercise level. It is not the same as HIV."
His positive outlook may seem a little foreign, not only in Scotland, but in a field that can sometimes generate more frustration than hope.
But perhaps a blast of fresh air is required to sweep some of those crisp packets and chocolate wrappers away.
Inequality
The latest figures showing how the class divide in Scotland impacts on health.
- YEARS OF GOOD HEALTH
Men
The least deprived: 76
The most deprived: 57
Women
The least deprived: 78
The most deprived: 59
- YEARS OF LIFE
Men
The least deprived: 80
The most deprived: 67
Women
The least deprived: 84
The most deprived: 75
- HOSPITALISED BY HEART ATTACK BEFORE THE AGE OF 75
The least deprived: 42 for every 100,000 people
The most deprived: 58 for every 100,000 people
- HOSPITAL ADMISSION RELATED TO ALCOHOL
BEFORE THE AGE OF 75
The least deprived: 110 per 100,000 people
The most deprived: 700 per 100,000 people
- DEATH FROM CORONARY HEART DISEASE AGED 45-74
The least deprived: 90 for every 100,000 people
The most deprived: 330 for every 100,000 people
- CANCER BEFORE THE AGE OF 75
The least deprived: 280 cases per 100,000 people
The most deprived: 390 cases per 100,000 people
- DEATH FROM CANCER
AGED 45-74
The least deprived: 260 per 100,000 people
The most deprived: 600 per 100,000 people
- DEATH FROM CONDITIONS RELATED TO ALCOHOL AGED 45 to 74
The least deprived: 8 per 100,000 people
The most deprived: 100 per 100,000 people
- LOW BIRTHWEIGHT BABIES
The least deprived: 4%
The most deprived: 9%
- Source: Long-term monitoring of health inequalities, First report on headline indicators.
