A Spoonful of Sugar. Liz Fraser

portions for goodness’ sake.’

      Amen to that. Just as everything technological is getting smaller, so everything nutritional is getting bigger. Muffins are the size of basketballs, chip portions are like giant sacks of felled trees, and crisp packets are larger than bin liners. A ‘standard’ loaf of bread is now several slices bigger than it used to be, and 200g bars of chocolate have magically grown to 230g! Where will it ever stop?

      The crazy thing is that, whatever food suppliers might be doing to portion sizes, on the home front we have complete control over this, because we can choose to give our children whatever portion size we feel is right for them. And yet we often don’t seem to exercise this control one jot: I see kids sitting down to meals with more food on their plate than I could eat and then watch them listlessly munch their way through the whole lot, under the unwavering gaze of their parents – who then have the audacity to complain that their kids need more exercise because they’re overweight…

      Granny has her theory on this one:

      ‘All of this overeating is only a result of having too much money, you know. When we had to count every penny, and when there were rations, we didn’t waste it on huge portions that nobody could eat. We gave our children just as much as they needed – which wasn’t a lot when they were young – and there was no wastage. Any left over we used the day after, and we never piled our children’s plates up so high that they couldn’t finish. You all waste so much now – it’s horrifying.’

      Do we ever?! Money, we have been raised to believe, can buy us whatever we want. And, we’ve been told, we’re worth it. Well, the funny thing is that money has also trashed all the things we wanted, and, with tougher financial times a reality for many of us now, it’s going to be up to us now to change our ways and use our money more wisely.

      THROW-AWAY BRITAIN

      

      

Every day, we Brits throw away 220,000 loaves of bread, 1.6 million bananas, 5,500 chickens, 5.1 million potatoes, 660,000 eggs, 1.2 million sausages, 1.3 million yoghurts and 4.4 million apples.

      

Every year, we throw away over £10 billion of wasted food.

      

Daily food waste costs an average home more than £420 a year and for a family with children (that’s us then) this rises to £610. Madness! (stats from 2007)

      But hold on a second: you don’t want to waste food, of course, but neither do you want to underfeed a child – they are growing and learning so fast, after all. We are bombarded with information about how important it is to make sure our kids get enough of this and enough of that in their diet lest they develop scurvy, diabetes, behavioural problems or a silly walk (OK, possibly not that one) and this has almost certainly led to us feeling the need to offer our kids gargantuan portions on their plates. Here: look at all these wonder-nutrients – eat, child, EAT!

      Granny has little time for this, and argues her point in her usual clear, no-nonsense way:

      ‘Oh you hear so much about nutrition this and healthy diet that. But children are very clever, and they will eat as much or as little as they need or want on that day. Some days they want more, and other days they want very little. It’s the balance that’s important. Instead of worrying about what a child eats during the course of a day, think about what a child eats over a week. It usually all balances out.’

       Granny’s Pearl of Wisdom

      Just give them a little portion to start with – if they want more they’ll come straight back and ask for it, mark my words!

      This is so refreshingly simple that I feel calmed at once. Granny has raised four very healthy children this way, and that’s the only evidence I need to know it works.

      So where does all of this lead us? The three main points about feeding children healthily I’ve learned from Granny today are as follows:

      

Children need to eat REAL food not processed foods full of hidden fats that make them fat.

      

Food preparation should be done at home, with your children where possible, with time and love as important ingredients.

      

Children need to eat child-sized portions, and will tell you if they need more.

      No amount of muffins, biscuits or burgers we buy our children to alleviate our all consuming guilt for our frequent absences and hectic lifestyles, or because we simply can’t be bothered to cook them anything better, will make them any happier. The soup I have just eaten was better than anything I could have bought from the best food shops in the country, partly because it was healthier as it was home made, but also because it was made for me, with love, by my granny.

      Before she returns to the wonderful world of the National Geographic Channel, Granny gives me one last piece of old-fashioned advice.

       Granny’s Pearl of Wisdom

      People think they can buy affection, buy happiness and buy love. But they can’t. Cooking for your family is one of the best ways of making a loving home.