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The problem is that restaurants have assumed that kids don't want to eat anything other than chicken nuggets or fast-food burgers, but they do. They want to eat things that taste good.

In my family, we let our boys have a say in what veggie side they want for dinner that night. We list off a handful of options and get them excited about helping to plan the dinner menu. They're much more inclined to finish their plates when they've helped decide what goes on them.

My daughter is a very adventurous eater. I'm not the guy who sits around lamenting that all my kid will eat it is Tater Tots and chicken nuggets. With my kid, it's more a capricious and whimsical decision-making.

I was mainly raised by a working mum who didn't have much time or inclination for making food. So I had three or four basic meals: fish fingers and a tomato; a packet scotch egg and a tomato; pasta with a tin of tomatoes; and extra mild plastic-y cheddar chopped into cubes with bits of cucumber.

Kids see cooking as a creative outlet now, like soccer and ballet. It gives me hope that things like fast food, childhood obesity and the horrible state of school lunches can be addressed by kids and their parents.

As parents are usually working, they haven't time to teach children about cooking, and it's a wilderness. They should be given healthy recipes - some standbys so that when they leave home, they don't live on junk.

Soups are a great way to introduce a lot of vegetables to kids. Stir-fries, too, because they contain so many different shapes and colors.

Pizza certainly has its place in school meals, but equating it with broccoli, carrots and celery seriously undermines this nation's efforts to support children's health and their ability to learn because of better school nutrition.

Packing lunches and going over menus is a great way to make small changes in the way your kids eat.

Everyone prefers some foods over others, but some adults take this tendency to an extreme. These people tend to prefer the kinds of bland food they may have enjoyed as children - such as plain or buttered pasta, macaroni and cheese, cheese pizza, French fries and grilled cheese sandwiches - and to restrict their eating to just a few dishes.