All soup is soul food.

In pretty much every country in the world, something hot and brothy cooked in a pot and served in a bowl is viewed as uniquely nourishing. Soup places low demands on the eater. It treats you as a child, who may or may not know how to use a knife and fork. You do not have to chop, or even to chew. Soup is what our mothers gave us when we were ailing. It’s what we return to after a hard day at work, when all we want to do is curl up in a foetal position on the sofa.

It’s not birthday cake in itself that is the problem. It’s the surrounding culture of food, where sweet treats are ever-present, consumed without ceremony.

Healthy eating should not preclude the odd cake. But it’s good to be able to wait: if not for a while year, at least for an hour or two.

Feeding children is an immense responsibility.

You want to see the treat vanish and the happy face to appear and when this happens, you feel great about yourself.

We are all descended from survivors, and survivors were the chubby ones.

Feeding children too often can make them forget what their own hunger feels like. Large portions lead to overeating. And giving food to calm a distressed child teaches them that unhappiness is a reason to eat.

Force-feeding is a crime of passion, driven by a parent’s desire to see a child eat; as with other crimes of passion, the perpetrator has lost sight of the loved one’s autonomy.