Obesity-proofing our children 170 do. This strategy probably only works until the age of two or three. Until this age it is relatively easy to keep children away from sweet food and they have no idea of what they are missing out on. But after this age the world, in the form of other children, starts to invade and a different strategy using a more sophisticated approach is required. The point is best illustrated by a story. Jack, a member of one of my groups, told the story of how at home they kept a bowl of mini chocolate bars in their fridge. All family members were welcome to help themselves at any time. At first the kids were into them all the time. But over time they noticed a strange turn of events. The kids started going to the fridge, passing over the chocolate bars and taking fresh fruit or a carrot to eat. But what was equally strange was that both parents, found themselves unable to resist the chocolate bars while their children moved onto healthier foods. Jack confirmed that both he and his wife had grown up in families where sweet food like this was forbidden. I have not seen any research on this, but it would be fascinating to follow a group of kids like Jack’ s that were given greater( maybe not quite unlimited) access to these fattening foods and compare them with children who were repeatedly deprived of the same foods. The only proviso would be that the children in the first group given the greater access would have to eat a good quantity and range of healthy foods first. I suspect you would find that the second group of children would have more difficulty eating in a healthy way as adults.( Unfortunately, I don’ t think it will work on adults, as Jack’ s story demonstrated!) My advice to him was that now that he had cured his kids of the need for these foods he should stop making them so readily available and save himself and his wife from an early grave. Interestingly they were not a particularly high sacrifice food for Jack and he was happy to let them go. As they were a high sacrifice food for his wife I prescribed one bar on most days for morning tea.