Yeah, some kids need persuasion in order to eat a more varied diet, so that’s probably where the thinking comes from, but like anything if taken to extremes it becomes abusive.

Now I’m middle aged and have developed a bunch of food allergies, so I’ve been forced into picky eating :-(

Probably the weirdest thing for me was a lunch supervisor who decided I had to eat liver when that was part of lunch in the small rural primary school I went to.

It always had the texture of a rubber ball and the flavour of stale vomit. So I would be made to sit and look at it on my plate instead of going out and playing with the other kids, for about 30 minutes, once a week.

I wasn’t a picky eater (we didn’t have much money, so that was my main meal of the day, I was always hungry), that was literally the only thing I didn’t want to eat. Other kids weren’t made to eat all of their lunches.

I remember her being really angry about it and standing over me the whole time.

I’d forgotten all about hand pain from forced copy-writing, being a lefty that was a common part of my disliking school