SO which way are you going to try and kill your children today? With fat, sugar, junk food? - or a good, greasy combination of the lot. Not much point in driving them to school to avoid the dangers of traffic if you're chopping years off their lives every tea time.

In Texas (Texas, of all places, where so many people are so gargantuan that it is the only place in my life where I have felt almost skinny) they are planning to ban snacks and soft drinks from school cafeterias.

It's a start.

One of the most depressing reads at the moment is the children's menu in just about any pub. Rarely do they go beyond something-fried-in-breadcrumbs-and-chips. "It's what children want." say landlords, with some justification.

Yes, because it's all many children know, so it's a vicious circle.

And if you look at supermarket food aimed at children, despite its occasionally healthy claims, you will find that much of it contains much more fat and sugar than the adult version. Read the small print if you dare.

When our boys were small, we found most pubs were happy to dish out small portions of the adult menu. There was one pub which said, rather sniffily, "We don't do children's food" to which we replied, equally sniffily, "He doesn't eat children's food." Our three-year-old then chomped happily away through an upmarket salad, leaving only the mushroom (which he still loathes) and the olive - but with teeth marks to prove he'd tried it.

Once they hit their teens, of course, they could demolish junk food with the best of them, generally washed down with gallons of lager as well. All I could do was keep the fruit bowl well-stocked and tempting. And at least, I consoled myself, they'd had a decent start.

Junk food is fun and fine in small doses. It's also OK when it's balanced out by plenty of exercise. But too often, as the Americans have found, it's neither of those things.

And they're beginning to fight back. Two thirds of adult Americans are overweight. And the way children are stuffing the calories, that's going to grow - in all senses. Hence the proposed ruling.

What's more, they are beginning to question the way in which the giant food companies dictate what our children eat. Last century, say commentators, ended with the tobacco companies being demonised. This century could be the turn of the junk food manufacturers.

Time to re-think what you're making for tea?

THE technology now exists to raise the dead. Well, not literally you understand, but cinematically. Stars long gone to the great Oscar night in the sky can now be digitally recreated to star in new films, although actors with the advantage of being alive and breathing have to speak their words for them.

Though I'm sure there is a demand for John Wayne or Marlene Dietrich to stalk our screens again, it could be even more tempting for stars who are still with us but not exactly the people they once were.

Wonderful for Elizabeth Taylor or Brigitte Bardot to have their youthful bodies doing all the hard work, while they just sit back and do the voice over.

CAN we just get this straight - allowing homosexual couples to adopt is nothing to do with rights for gays and everything to do with rights for children.

There are currently 58,000 children in so-called "care" - a misnomer if ever there was.

Chances are that some of those children could have a much better start in life if they were brought up in a family with parents of the same sex than where they are now.

Of course some gay couples would be wildly unsuitable - as are many heterosexual couples. We cannot and should not generalise and, like all would-be adoptees, they would have to go through the same stringent assessment procedures. So please save us the hysteria.

And, let's face it. All those 58,000 children started out with two heterosexual biological parents - and that hasn't got them very far, has it?

THE A1 is a notoriously tricky road. Down its length it goes from trunk road to motorway, back to trunk road and then to motorway again.

It's easy to forget momentarily which bit you're on. It takes some concentration as many drivers just think they're on a motorway all the time and expect to drive to motorway rules - a confusion which has led to many accidents.

So why on earth are cyclist allowed to hold time trials on the A1, as they were last weekend? Is it really the only place they can think of?

MOTORWAY toll roads to increase the flow of traffic? Doubtful. Not if you have to queue to pay at the end.

You just need one nugget to drop their money and, on our crowded roads, you've got a two-mile tailback before he's found the pound under the brake.

About 40 years ago someone described a motorway as the shortest route between two bottlenecks. Nothing's changed.

GREAT news - drinking white wine is good for your lungs. Along with the fact that red wine is good for your heart and housework is no good at all, all we need now is to learn that toffee and pecan ice cream has cancer-preventing qualities and life will be pretty near perfect.

Published:22/05/2002