I don’t buy crisps and hardly ever feel like eating them but put me in front a bowl of them and I can’t help myself! It’s even worse with a glass of wine and a few friends around. The ambiance, the conversation… before I know it I’ve mindlessly gobbled up hundreds of kilojoules and a few good spoonfuls of fat. It’s all to do with proximity.

So if it works with crisps, why not vegetables? This is the question that researchers at Cornell University recently answered with a resounding YES. Move the salad bar so it’s more ‘in your face’ and the kids eat more salad. Such a simple move, and not a mention of 5-a-day, antioxidants or any other cleverly crafted health coercement (not sure if that is a word but it sounds good!)

But hold on, don’t us mums already do that at home? We innately understand proximity. We chop an extra carrot, a few extra vegetables and pop them in front of the kids to allay the pre-dinner whining. We chop up fruit and put it on the table – and it gets eaten. If we told our kids to go eat an apple or a carrot, they would hardly jump at the idea. But when it’s placed in front of them most kids gladly eat it – especially if there’s nothing else on offer. I’ve found it works with husbands too.

So before the researchers and big business spend any more millions on working out how to get kids to eat their food, perhaps they could leave work early and see how it’s done in their own home!

I knew it would happen eventually: my eight-year-old is finally asking for sandwiches. Not just any sandwich, mind you, it has to be avocado and tomato. Perhaps it’s all the activity of the past week on holiday at Whakatane and Lake Rotoma. We’ve been boogie boarding at the beach, water skiing, biscuiting, kayaking, swimming and jumping off scarily high rocks into the lake – fun! All that water and sunshine sure stimulates the appetite but I think the recent call for avocado and tomato sandwiches is just an age thing.

Toddlers who eat fruit as a snack rather than with meals are three times more likely to have iron deficiency. “But I thought it was healthy to give my child fruit as a snack,” commented the health professional sitting near me. “It is,” replied Dr Clare Wall, one of three child nutrition experts speaking at a seminar I attended this week. “But it’s also important for toddlers to eat fruit with a meal because it increases iron absorption from that meal.”

One in six Kiwi toddlers are iron deficient and around two-thirds don’t eat enough iron to meet the recommended daily intake. For most, it’s not bad enough to cause anaemia but it is bad enough to affect their behaviour and brain

Eighty percent of our adult brain is formed by the age of three. So just at the time when our toddlers have learnt that saying “NO” causes the big people around them to act in all sorts of funny ways, we need to make sure they somehow get enough brain nutrients into them, particularly iron, zinc and omega-3 fats.

Iron carries oxygen around the body. If a muscle is deprived of oxygen, it dies. If a toddler doesn’t get enough iron the brain doesn’t get enough oxygen. It can’t develop so well – and the damage is irreversible.