There's a modern and probably understandable obsession with the diet of our children.
Sugar, carbs, red meat, sugar, fats, additives, roughage, what they eat in school and so on and so on and so on.
What was it like when you were a kid?
Did we really eat loads of crap every minute of the day like people think we did?
Sure, I myself ate a lot of sweets. I loved sweets and I'm pretty sure my teeth have suffered as a result. But the rest of my diet was pretty balanced I reckon. My Mum, the head chef of my childhood, provided lots of different Sixties and Seventies grub using a whole range of ingredients and pans including a pressure cooker and a chip pan.
Meals I recall, some home made, some not, were: Mince and onions, sausage and mash, fish balls and croquettes, Lancashire hot pot, butter pie and marrowfat peas, cheese and onion pie and peas, pea soup with ham shank, vesta chow mien, vesta paella, vesta beef curry, fried egg and new potatoes, poached eggs on toast, finny haddock and boiled spuds, salad and chips, ham salad, toasties, sunday dinner and of course, fish and chips and my personal favourite, suet pudding and chips.
There was local and regional nosh too: onion rings in vinegar, red cabbage and vinegar, thick pea soup with juicy ham on the bone, parched peas and the coastal pickled vegetable, samphire.
We also had a chest freezer full of convenience foods like mini pizzas and probably some ready meals, although I don't think there were many of those back then.
Oh, and there was lots of fizzy pop like Tizer, Dandelion and Burdock and Sarsaparilla.
Yeah, I suppose it was a fairly traditional diet for a kid growing up when I did in Lancashire. Lots of meat and two veg and puddings to follow. There wasn't much aubergine or any star fruit and probably no avocado.
Yet I'm still here and I'm not a drooling zombie incapable of rational thought - as far as I know! OK, I do have a few teeth missing and high blood pressure but I don't think I was a fed a toxic pile of slurry by my parents. Any dodgy foods I've eaten probably came later and is my own silly fault.
Do you think you ate badly as a kid?
