I work part-time in a large store and am horrified by the kind of food parents are buying their kids.

I can usually guess the contents of a family's trolley if I see overweight parents and children: enormous, family-sized packs of potato chips, dips of various flavors, sweets, puddings, cakes and fizzy drinks. The potato chips and cheese dips plus fizzy drinks appear to be for the school snack boxes.

Apart from the bad diet these kids are being fed the cost is huge!

A little 'treat' is fine, but too much salt, fat and sugar is very, very bad for children.

Are you guilty of feeding your kids too many bad foods and what would you like to do about it?

No. Honestly I am a bit of a nazi over a few things; car seat, food and sleep. My daughter's favourite foods are broccoli and beans-she just loves red kidney, and black beans.

That doesn't mean she doesn't get snacks. Today we had home made crisps (potato chips) because I was craving them. So she had a handful too. But it's a really rare thing.

People have become brainwashed that processed food is just as healthy as a more natural diet, despite the additives or the fact that they require nutrition added after the fact to make them meet minimum standards. It is incredibly expensive. We just bought some of these at the grocery store for a sales promotion to get free movie tickets, but the food (chips, crackers, cookies, fruit snacks and breakfast bars-and condiments) will probably last us most of the summer.

It is SOOO expensive to buy all those premade processed foods, isn't it?

My kids are guilty of getting a few too many lollipops, or I guess I'm guilty of allowing it, but they don't drink soda, they eat whole wheat bread and whole foods that I make and they prefer my homemade cookies to storebought, so we aren't doing too badly.

I admit, once a week or so we have a processed meal. Weather it's nuggets and fries, or frozen pizza, every now and then we are just too busy for a full fledged meal. But no matter what I make, it always has a side of veggies. Lately though, I've become a sodium nazi. I won't buy anything that has too much sodium, which pretty much rules out most processed foods.