Jayne Dowle: You can’t blame boy bands for your family diet

Advertising watchdogs have announced that they are going to “consult” on the marketing of foods high in sugar, fat and salt to children under 16. This means that celebs such as boy-bands, and former footballer Gary Lineker who is the face of Walker’s Crisps, could be banned from the adverts.

You can see why action on obesity needs to be taken. One in three children now leave primary school seriously overweight, tooth decay is the biggest cause of emergency admission to hospital amongst young people, and we’re fuelling up a frightening rise in serious health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers, all exacerbated by obesity.

However, I think that the advertising watchdogs are missing the point here. Youngsters have enjoyed pop and crisps for decades, since way before “celebrity culture” took hold. They’re not going to suddenly stop craving them just because the old bloke off Match of the Day gets the sack and loses his lucrative advertising deal.

I’d like to see the research that proves without a shadow of a doubt that celebrity endorsement actually persuades youngsters to eat and drink things which aren’t good for them. I’d say there were other factors at work here, not least peer pressure and parents too lazy or feckless to argue back and say a firm “no” when their offspring are screaming, shouting and drumming their feet on the back of the car-seat because they want a McDonald’s for the third time that week.

It’s not just celebrities in the firing line either. Cartoon characters such as the Honey Monster and Tony the Tiger could also face the chop, and fast food chains will be curtailed in their efforts to flog kiddie meals by tying in with film promotions and so on. If this means that I don’t have to pick small broken plastic figures of Frozen characters out of the car for the rest of my life, I’d be quite pleased about that. Honestly though, is it right that Tony the Tiger is getting it in the neck?

Whatever happened to parental responsibility? It’s simple really. If we want to curtail the accelerating problem of childhood obesity in the UK, we have to stop acting like children ourselves and start to behave like adults. This means putting ourselves in charge of what we buy to eat for our families, and stop allowing our children to dictate to us.

We should also remind ourselves of everything in moderation and all that. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a fast food meal every now and again, for instance. Gosh, I admit it. We indulged in one only last week because the children had been particularly well-behaved and deserved a little treat. It’s when fast food and junk food and so-called energy bars and energy drinks and general all-round unhealthy eating becomes a substitute for proper meals that we should start to be concerned.

Yet it seems to me that too many parents are blind to the warning signs in their own homes. Only the other day, I read a survey carried by BBC Good Food magazine. It said that the days of the family sitting down to a meal together and well and truly history. More than a quarter of British people eat their main meal of the day alone. Can this be right, in a civilised country?

I know that the demands of modern lives and modern families can make it difficult to corral everyone round the table. Heaven knows we struggle some days, but we really do try at our house. Nothing is better for a family than sitting down together for 20 minutes, eating and talking about the day. Nothing is more lonely than a plate shoved in the microwave and shovelled down on a tray in front of the television.

Yet how many times have I heard parents complaining that they never cook a family meal because the members of their family all disagree about what they want to eat? They say that by the time you’ve done pandering to one person’s meal replacement shakes and another’s hatred of vegetables and emptied half the fridge and freezer trying to accommodate everyone’s requirements, you might as well not bother. Fair enough.

However, if this is what’s happening in our homes, how can we possibly be bringing up our children to understand the importance of eating decent food and achieving a balanced diet? I’ve had friends of my children round for tea who have never eaten carrots, or drunk water with a meal. The other night, my teenage son’s pal sat down with us to tuck into gammon, potatoes and vegetables and asked me, in all honesty, what parsley sauce was made of. This is what we’re dealing with. And it’s got nothing whatsoever to do with Gary Lineker, One Direction or poor old Tony the Tiger.