Читать книгу A Spoonful of Sugar - Liz Fraser - Страница 51

As she strokes and he purrs, she tells me her last tip about feeding children well.

‘There’s one more thing that has made your children all fatter, you know, and that’s how much you give them. Why must you all feed your children – and yourselves too – as though they aren’t going to see food for the next month? They are children – they’re small! So give them small 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.