Shock tactics do work

serve the same sort of food in the same way. The basis of the meal is always
cardboard-textured pizza or some variety of reformed meat. It is served on
plastic trays together with a sugary sweet. Vegetables are boiled until bereft
of nutrients or put in sweetened tomato sauce. Staff requesting a meal get
specially prepared jacket potatoes or salad - they are not expected to eat the
same slop as the children.

Children's concentration and listening skills are decreasing year on year.

All possible causes must be considered, but clearly diet is a contributory
factor. Parents know the effect that highly coloured and sweetened foods have
on young children's behaviour.

Your pull-out on 'Childhood through the ages' (in the same issue) asserts that
childhood is an historical construct, a 'set of ideas about what children are
like, what they ought to be like and how adults should treat them'. It seems
that over the past 20 years an ideology has evolved which accepts that children
eat unhealthier, blander, sweeter food than adults.

Chant with me the 'children's menu' from any restaurant: chicken nuggets,
pizza, fish fingers, chips, ice cream...

It is on our nation's conscience that children now eat badly, but until
Oliver's campaign no-one had any clear idea what we could do about it.

Grenier says, 'Progress can only happen when there is systematic public policy,
supported by detailed research and carefully planned action.'

Sadly, I disagree. The Government has been in possession of nutritionists'

research findings for years, but Oliver's campaign has had an immediate impact
where cold facts have failed. Perhaps it takes shock tactics to wake everyone
from their saturated fat-induced stupor.

* Miriam Fraser, Hatfield, Hertfordshire