My View: Change on the menu after turkey 'snake' rears its ugly head

Looking down the list of what they boasted of in the prospectus as "good, nutritious home-style cooking", I spotted something called "Snakes and Ladders". Having never come across those in any of my Home Economics lessons at school, or sorties through Delia or Jamie, I asked one of the nursery staff what a Snake and Ladder was made of. She looked at me blankly and then replied: "Turkey, I think."

Jamie Oliver had just outed the Turkey Twizzler as the scourge of the school canteen. So being a mother who, for the first 18 months of my daughter's life had peeled, boiled and pulped tons of organic fruit and veg to within an inch of its life, I was shocked to discover her being fed something which resembled the contraband Twizzler.

When I voiced my concerns higher up the food chain, I discovered I was not the only parent concerned about the level of sugar, fat and salt being fed to our young children.

Quite quickly the nursery, which was attached to a local boarding school, changed its menu.

But I was particularly concerned to discover that at that time there were no rules regarding the standard of food served in nursery schools.

While the country seemed in uproar about the nutritional value of school meals, no-one seemed to give a thought for the 600,000 nursery school children, many who received their entire week's meals at nursery.

However, things do seem to be changing.

Since September 2008, the Early Years Foundation Stage makes it a legal requirement that "Where children are provided with meals, snacks and drinks these must be healthy, balanced and nutritious".

However, EYFS provides no definition of what the Government means by "healthy and nutritious" for children in early years daycare.

While many nurseries have introduced high quality nutritious meals themselves, the Government is coming under growing pressure to introduce new legislation to improve nursery food. Almost one in four children starts school already overweight or obese.

The Better Nursery Food Now campaign, run by The Soil Association and funded by Organix, has launched a report calling for the introduction of mandatory standards.The campaign found that only a third of parents were happy with the food at their nursery. MP Joan Walley has tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) in parliament asking for mandatory standards for food served to children in early years daycare.

Our youngest children are the most vulnerable to the effects of poor diet.This means they are more likely to suffer from serious health problems later in life; yet there are no clear rules for the food nurseries can serve.