Nearly one in 20 year Year 6 pupils in England requires medical help for obesity. And while one in five children entering primary school is overweight or obese, by the time they leave key stage two, the statistic jumps to one in three, according to Government data.

As the food historian Bee Wilson has written, while we’ve never had such an abundance of affordable food, the choices that we are making are damaging our own health, and that of our children.

From the explosive growth in takeaway and delivery meals to the ubiquity of processed food and its particular marketing towards children, it’s easy to eat filling items with poor nutritional content.

What can we do?

We know that children who learn to cook from a young age make healthier food choices throughout their lives. And yet, food education is not on the national curriculum for primary school.

At the moment, food prep and nutrition are taught differently around the United Kingdom. It can be included in science and health lessons, but it is not explicitly taught with the goal of helping children improve their diets now, and it lacks a hands-on approach that engages children. Falling in England under the umbrella of "design and technology", the guidance for food preparation education is vague: children in the first few years of primary school are tasked only with the goal that they "understand where food comes from"; key stages 2 and 3 (secondary) should include lessons in how to "understand and apply the principles of a healthy and varied diet" and "prepare and cook a variety of predominantly savoury dishes using a range of cooking techniques", but I have seen no evidence of these lessons in my children's school and, the fact is that many schools lack the facilities, never mind the expertise, to do this.