Cereal offences start to ruin our boy's excellent mealtime record.

Byline: By Jane Hall

The Journal's features editor Jane Hall maps out the perils of navigating a child through the dietary minefield.

Six months ago my five-year-old son attended a birthday party at a fast-food chain.

The `party' meal was a child-sized burger with French fries and a fizzy drink.

As the other children tucked in my son looked disdainfully at his meal and loudly declared: "I'm not eating that!" My heart swelled with pride.

To this day not one morsel of a burger has passed John David's lips, nor one drop of a fizzy, sugar-laden drink.

We have raised our only child to appreciate wholesome food. He will eat bucketfuls of carrots, loves broad beans, adores broccoli and goes into raptures over boiled potatoes.

He also loves crisps, is partial to chocolate and Peperamis and has a fondness for take-away curry - although not too hot. But as part of a normal, well-balanced diet I feel I can allow him these lapses in judgement. The only trouble is, these lapses are occurring more often.

I now quake when he demands to come on the Saturday supermarket run. Where once he used to obediently run around collecting everything on my list, now he is just as likely to head off on his own and come back with some unsavoury item for me to buy.

I have now taken to shopping at unorthodox hours. It may not do anything for my sleep patterns but it's doing wonders for my sanity.

The supermarket run isn't the only area of contention, however. "Mummy, I want the chocolate breakfast cereal the monkey eats," he will yell from his position in front of the television.

Starting school has further undermined all the good work his father and myself have done on developing his tastebuds.

To be fair, his school offers a wide-ranging lunch menu. There are healthy options everyday. But John David rarely seems to choose them. "What did you have for lunch today then?" "A T-Rex with chips and mashed potato and tadpoles with chocolate sprinkles. I mixed the chocolate up and Matthew said it looked like..." We'll stop there I think.

I no longer have sole influence over what my child eats. A whole new world of E-numbers, sugar, salt and flavour enhancers has opened up before him. And the future is lurid green.