Another food story today, but this time one that hasn't yet made the national press and is being announced as a good thing. On the surface it sounds great - in a bid to get all out children eating healthier, food scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University have found a way of making Quavers and Wotsits more nutritious by adding fruit powder to them. Or as MMU's press department writes: Researchers sneak nutrients into snacks

But you know I am going to take a contrary point of view don't you?

Of course I am.

I have an inherent dislike of this. I don't disagree with trying to get our children to eat healthy foods, but this strikes me as completely the wrong way to go about it.

I'm not a Luddite and I realise that much of what I eat is due to modern food production techniques, clever planning and scientifically informed agricultural methods, but the obsession of the food industry towards processed foods themselves I have always been unhappy with.

I don't mind Quavers and Wotsits. They are crunchy and tasty and as far as I can tell have no nutritional value whatsoever, but why should they - they are not food. The point of eating a bag of Wotsits is nothing to do with feeding yourself - by the same token watching The XFactor would be classed as education.

There's no need to put fruit powder into these things to turn them into food - nothing you can add to them will turn them into food.

If Wotsits with fruit powder go on sale, within a very short time they will be advertised as a healthy way to give your child one of their five a day. People who are not so cynical as me, will give them to their children thinking they are doing them good. A similar thing happened when it became known that breakfast cereals had almost no nutritional value whatsoever and children were beginning to turn up in doctors surgeries with rickets and scurvy. The manufacturers started adding vitamins to their cereals - basically to stop the malnutrition which was observed in children’s diets caused by them eating a diet of breakfast cereals in the first place. If you want your children to eat fruit, give them some fruit. We don't need to sneak fruit into snacks. Fruit is already tasty and most kids love it.

If you want your children to eat a healthy diet, give them one - but don't expect anyone else to do it for you, least of all organisations whose only motive is profit.