Food is something of a national obsession at the moment, with the battle against junk food and obesity raging on with seemingly very little impact. Increasingly, the evidence points to the early years being the really important time for children to eat well and acquire good dietary habits for the future.
This week, we report on a new study that has found that a poor diet in the early years is more likely to affect children's progress at school adversely than the food they eat when they are older (see News, page 3).
Yet most effort and funding continue to concentrate on primary and secondary children. There are still no legal nutrition standards for food in early years settings (despite a framework for curriculum and regulation - the Early Years Foundation Stage - whose statutory nature has been controversially enforced). And there are no such standards in prospect.
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