Honestly I don’t know why I read the Daily Fail but there’s an utterly ridiculous article on their website today by someone called Rose Prince who claims that we have feminism to thank ‘for the spread of fast-food chains and an epidemic of childhood obesity.’ Basically, she's saying that because women started wising up about equality, we stopped cooking proper food for our families, started relying on convenience food, and made our kids fat.
What utter hogwash. My mum was a proper banner-waving women’s libber but she always cooked for us. We grew up eating coq au vin and chile con carne and all those classic Seventies dishes (and very nice they were too). And let's face it, long before there were equal opportunities, there have always been chips.
Childhood obesity is a problem because of the proliferation of fast food restaurants – something that started in car-obsessed US and because our kids have become more insular. I doubt whether women who stuff their kids full of junk food do it because they refuse to cook on the grounds it undermines their position. More likely because they can't be bothered.
But I’d love to know what you think. Does it really follow that because you believe in equality at home and in the workplace, you don’t believe in cooking for your family? What's really making our kids fat?
written by Liz Jarvis