Pizza and chips

SIR – As a newly qualified health visitor in the 1970s I worked in one of the poorest areas of Walsall. Children’s growth was markedly inferior to that of their peers from the more affluent areas of the borough.

Food was relatively more expensive than it is now, but an underlying cause of this deprivation was sometimes simply poor budgeting, parental addiction or a reluctance to cook.

At the end of my career, food was cheaper but poor budgeting, parental addiction, a reliance on ready meals and an inability to cook meant that malnourished children still existed, but were no longer skinny but obese.

I applauded the proposed schoolholiday meals scheme (Letters, September 4) until an item on local television showed children being served huge portions of pizza and chips. It appears that the scheme may resolve the problem of hunger but it will do nothing to address the persistent problem of life-shortening malnutrition. Sheelagh James

Lichfield, Staffordshire