It is possible to educate children in the pleasures of food; and that doing so will set the children up for a lifetime of healthy eating. Feeding is learning.

A sensory education seems to have the potential to free up a child from many of the old barriers to trying new food.

Learning to eat a good and varied diet is a key part of every child’s education.

Siblings have always marked out territory through food.

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.

Women have a special relationship with chocolate mostly because our culture tells them to. It goes back to the old claptrap about sweet treats being for ‘ladies’, while savoury tastes for men.

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.