The power siblings have over our eating habits is no small thing. yet we hardly ever talk about these familial influences.

But almost no one speaks of building up girls - these delicate soufflé-nibbling creatures who ought to be able to survive on air and compliments. Instead, a great focus is placed on building up their brothers, stoking them with dangerous delusions about how much food they need. In the current food environment, the overfeeding of boys is no more helpful than the underfeeding of girls.

Too many overweight teenage girls are being pressurised by their families to lose weight when what they in fact need is better nourishment (which would almost certainly help them lose weight along the way).

It’s a truism that we know what we like and we like what we know. If you ask young children which foods they most detest, they tend to be the ones they have never actually tasted, often vegetables.

Almost every parent wants the best for their child, but they are frequently too hung up on the indignities of the past to see the real problems in front of them or to separate a child’s needs from their own urges.

What you taste as a child is still there in your adult brain, even if you haven’t thought of it for years.

The main reason to be suspicious of fruit as a food for children was that it was just so delicious.

To give a child the things they love to eat bestows a heroic glow. Seeing a child fed reassures you that you have done your duty as a parent, like a mother bird ferrying worms to the nest.

Much of what we learn about eating comes from the way our parents feed us.