Health Warning: we are what we eat

Life on Tapp with Blaise Tapp SUS-160516-112125001

One of the great fringe benefits of becoming a dad is that I was forced, at the age of 32, to grow up almost overnight.

My weekends no longer consist of watching Jeff Stelling and his pals on Soccer Saturday while supping endless pints of the gassy Belgian brew you can see through. Now my ‘days of rest’ tend to kick off at 6.30am with relentless demands for a bottle of the white stuff and it doesn’t tend to get any easier thereafter.

My challenges are no different from those facing millions of other parents, who vainly try to hide the zombie look with plenty of caffeine and a Jack Nicholson-esque grin.

The list of parenting dos and don’t we are forced to negotiate is endless: not getting any closer than six feet from the telly, no telly until they are ready for school and nursery, no telly after seven, bed by 8pm, teeth cleaned twice a day - and a proper clean mind you, not one of those six second jobs.

This is before you get to oversee homework you can barely understand yourself, or the now obligatory music practice. It is non-stop.

But the biggest challenge we undoubtedly face is making sure that our kids don’t end up sporting pot bellies before they start Year R as childhood obesity is a scourge which shows no sign of going away.

The figures are stark: one in five children are classed as obese before they start primary school while that increases to a frightening one in three by the time they are 11.