It is highly important to ensure our children don't eat contaminated food.
That's not the most serious danger on their plates.
The main problem with most children's diet is the amount of junk food eaten.
Packed with saturated fat, salt and sugar, it fills them up but provides little nourishment.
In fact, digesting a burger may use up more B vitamins than the burger provides.
A healthy diet is important at any age, but never more than in childhood.
That's when our bodies are growing fastest, incorporating everything we put into them, for good or bad.
The way we eat then sets us on the path to lifelong health and energy, or to endless niggling health problems and low level un-wellness.
Children, more than anyone, need to eat plenty of fruit and vegetables (frozen is fine if they're horrified by the sight of fresh vegetables).
They need meat and dairy products or suitable body building alternatives such as other vegetable proteins.
Bread and cereals are healthy fillers too for children.
Like adults, children need to eat a wide range of foods to make sure they get all the nutrients they need, but most kids' diets contains little varieties, despite all the different products.
Read the labels on the sweets and munchies they fill up on and you'll see the same few ingredients again and again - mainly unhealthy or unnecessary, like sugar and additives.
The more junk food they eat, the more restricted their diet really is.
Current parents have a harder time now than even thirty years before, when the range of junk food now available simply didn't exist.
Then children ate real food or nothing other than that.
Now, it's hard to battle against the advertisers, who are allowed so much more time on children's television here.
And it is heart breaking when meals turn into a battle of wills between parents and children.
But the effort put into helping children build good eating habits is repaid many times over.
It's not surprising doctors have found children suffering from scurvy - a lethal but almost forgotten disease that's easily cured with vitamin C - when many eat no fruits or vegetables other than potatoes chips.
And resilient though children are, a bad diet in childhood can store up trouble for later life.
Heart disease, for example, is linked with poor diet during childhood period.
Another frightening long term result of this, or any form of malnutrition, is the brittle bone disease osteoporosis which causes so much pain and injury in elderly people, especially women.
The disease sets in when the bones begin to thin, so if young people don't build strong bones they risk suffering from it much earlier.
Milk is an important source of calcium, though ordinary cow's milk is not for babies as it can cause allergies.
Children from one to five years old should drink fully fat milk and semi skimmed is all right for schoolchildren.
Switching to skimmed milk and low fat cheese can placate a weight watching teenager without losing any of the calcium content.
Most children love to drink fruit juice, a powerful source of vitamins.
But beware of fruit drinks which tend to be sugar laden and low in juice.
And healthy though real juice is, it's best diluted to avoid tooth decay.
Whole fruit is even better than fruit juice.
In general, the less processed a food is and is better it is for you.
Make sure that children don't drink enough to ruin their appetites.
Even milk and fruit juice don't contain all the nutrients they need, but soft drinks will just rot their teeth and fill them up without providing any goodness at all.
In fact, a lot of soft drinks have been found to contain more than the legal limit of artificial sweeteners, often together with sugar.
You may not have much control over what your children eat during the day, but breakfast is one meal that makes a lot of difference.
Kids who eat good breakfast do better at school because they can concentrate.
It's worth waking them up early enough to have some healthy cereal like corn flakes, porridge or whole meals toast and fruit juice, or yogurt with fresh fruit.
Read the labels on cereals aimed at children, since these are often sugary junk food themselves - though still better than nothing in the mornings.
You can often fool kids eating healthier fare by sweetening ordinary cereals or yogurt with handful of dried fruit.
You can also help do well at school by giving them lunches or snacks that will keep them going all day long.
Sandwiches are the great standby, especially if you use whole meal bread, cheese or ham with salad are good meals in themselves, with an apple or banana.
School meals used to be a mainstay of healthy diets until nutritional standards were abolished in the early eighties, which then allowed schools to serve any kind of junk as long as it was cheap and easy to prepare.
The odd bar of chocolate or bag of crisps won't matter as long as children eat plenty of fresh vegetables, whole grains, fruit and dairy product, with some meat or other protein foods.
There's no need to worry if a child turns down vegetables, just make sure they replace the meat with nuts, seeds, beans, pulses, eggs, cheese, bean curd or meat substitutes like Quorn.
If they turn strictly vegan, refusing even eggs or dairy products, consider giving them a vitamin B-complex supplement for replacement or complement.
Watch out that you don't go to the other extreme, though of putting your children on a diet that's not appropriate for their age.
Though skimmed milk is recommended for adults to help keep our ever increasing fat intake down, it's unsuitable for children.
Children need slightly more fat (from healthy sources like dairy food and vegetable oils), because that's the most concentrated source of the calories they need for growing.
Too much fiber fills them up so they can't take enough calories on board.
Important Points: o Keep healthy snacks like fruit ready in the fridge.
A banana is an excellent fast food.
o Get children up in time to have breakfast and to take a packed lunch.
o If they are overweight, just cut down on junk foods, get them to fill up with healthier meals, and join in new activities with them.