Shut up and eat your food

JUST SO BRAVE: Seinfeld and Veep actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus

IF YOU want proof that times have changed look no further than a correction offered by Sainsbury’s this week. “No,” says the supermarket, “vegetarians are not responsible for the surge in food waste. The real culprits are the combined forces of fussy eaters, varying tastes and clashing schedules which cause families to prepare multiple meals every day.”

Altogether now, in the words of the late very much lamented Lionel Bart: “Fings ain’t wot they used to be.”

The contrast between that briefly sketched scenario and the eating environment that anyone over the age of 35 grew up in could not be more dramatic.

If you are approaching your 40s or are way more vintage you will remember the era when fussy eaters were not a niche market to be indulged and accommodated but a rogue element to be subdued, conquered and sent to bed hungry if they didn’t snap out of it.

Most of us can tell tales of being served liver cold for breakfast, lunch and dinner until we thought better of our antipathy and swallowed the stuff. You will recall the refrain regularly intoned when we dared express lack of enthusiasm for rice pudding/cabbage/kidneys with the stringy bits left in. Just be grateful you are not a starving child in Africa/India or anywhere our parents’ geographical inclination happened to site these ravenous kids.

You will very probably also recollect your own truculent suggestion that your mum and dad packed up said ghastly pudding/cabbage/ kidneys and post them first class with your blessing to the aforementioned hungry infants – and the clip A HUGE hit on my BBC Radio London Breakfast Show this week was Geraldine Maidment, headmistress of small mixed private primary school Annemount.

Geraldine calmly told a rapt audience what she requires of her three to seven-year-old pupils every morning. They must be in charge of remembering the items they need to bring to school. They must – even the tiny ones – carry all their equipment themselves.

Parents must not step in round the earhole you received for being “so damn cheeky”.

There was nothing remotely enjoyable about being force-fed clumps of casserole or compelled to consume mountains of fervently loathed smoked haddock poached in milk turned virulent yellow. There’s no question, however, that the whole horrible process was character building.

Every detestable morsel taught us incalculably valuable lessons:

1. Having food on the table was a privilege for which we should be thankful, not a burden from which we needed to be rescued.

2. Food was for sustenance not entertainment. If chomping it didn’t thrill us – tough.

3. Parents had more than enough to do making a living and preparing a meal. It was selfish and unreasonable to expect them to pander to our individual likes and dislikes. And most importantly of all…

4. Much of life is spent enduring a whole lot of stuff you don’t much like. The world is not a bespoke picnic engineered to our particular requirements.

So don’t moan or waste time searching for someone to deliver you, just develop some backbone and learn to like it, lump it or – here is the big pay-off…

5. Work out a way that when you are an adult and in charge, you can change it.

To all the so-called grown-ups contributing to Britain’s shameful food-waste mountain, let’s issue a clarion call. Develop some commonsense. Instil some discipline and self-control in your offspring. Teach them the all-important lessons which in part helped past generations to learn resilience and stopped any of us being branded “snowflakes”.

DON’T BE A BAG CARRIER FOR YOUR CHILD

and shoulder the bags. Children must lead parents, not the other way round otherwise, says Geraldine, all little ones see is a procession of adult bottoms.

Children must then shake their headmistress by the hand, transferring bags to the left if necessary and in response to the question: “Good morning, how are you?” respond: “Very well, thank you. How are you?”

All this at three! My listeners – with a couple of exceptions – were utterly bowled over.