When we were little, my sister and I were not allowed sweets, chocolates and fizzy pop. It was a very strict rule, so much so that when Father Christmas put chocolate coins in our stockings, we would hide them from our mummy and daddy. "What did you get in your stockings, darlings?" they would ask. The two of us, our faces smeared with chocolate, would show them our satsumas and rubber bouncy balls and other trinkets. But not a word would pass our lips about the gold-wrapped chocolate coins.
It wasn't just at Christmas that we got lucky. In the early 70s, denying a child sugar was an evil hippy-weirdo thing for a parent to do, and other adults - particularly grandparents - frequently took pity on us. As we grew up we took to scavenging sugar at other children's parties; at school, we would walk miles to buy sweets from the garage when the tuck shop was closed. One way or another I ended up eating about the same amount of white sugar each day, I should think, as most of my friends.
Abused children frequently abuse their own children, and so it goes in this family. The no-sugar rule has been resurrected for another generation: there will be no sugar for my childling Jack, the poor wee mite. Or not much anyway, until he's old enough to score some himself.
You might not think, in a world where orthorexia (an unhealthy obsession with health food) is an actual medical condition, that depriving a 12-month-old of sugar would excite much comment. But outside Nappy Valley, it's still a hippy-weirdo thing. At baby group, when the coffee and biscuits come out, all the babies are allowed a biscuit - except Jackson, who must have a rice cake instead. "But why?" a mother asked me, over the roar of biscuit-powered children; I muttered self-consciously into my mug about sugar not being all that good for small children, and it was left at that. But I felt like a silly ninny.
Then, in the cafe at Waitrose, Jackson managed to charm an elderly woman sitting next to us. "I've got some ice cream in my bag for you," she told him, and started to rummage. Jon was forced to step in. "Er ... he doesn't eat anything with sugar in." "Why?" asked the woman. "Is he diabetic?"
In private, Jon, who was allowed a limited amount of sugar as he grew up, as most children are, is also rather interested in the "why" question, and not altogether impressed with my woolly mumblings (based on things I think I read somewhere) about sugar being very unhealthy and wildly addictive.
And, of course, it's not only sugar. For my parents it was vegetarianism. As well as sugar, we were denied meat. Mmm, meat. We used to gobble it down in secret at people's barbecues while our parents weren't looking. Well, vegetarianism is old hat - both my parents eat meat now. These days it's all about food being properly sourced, free-range and organic, innit, and of course, when at home, Jack eats nothing but.
A couple of weeks ago, he did have an entirely non-organic meal at some friends' house: bits of avocado, tomato, little sandwiches, shop-bought quiche. No fuss about where it had come from, or whether the boys should really be eating Branston pickle, and I felt like a right spoilt middle-class fuss-arse for even noticing this. I also couldn't help thinking that their son looked the picture of health and good spirits, while our son, weaned on nothing but organic, free-range, sugar- and salt-free whole foods, looked a bit of a weedy milksop in comparison.
Well, one can admire such no-nonsense parenting from afar. But one can't escape one's heritage. The Sunday before last, my mum was down from London and we walked to a pub for lunch, it being glorious weather. The couple at the table next to us in the vile, sterile "family room" had a six-month-old and a five-year-old. The five-year-old looked pretty chipper, but the six-month-old was an enormous blob of a child, roughly 10 times the size of Jackson.
Blob baby spent most of the time in his buggy, but at the end of their meal his parents got him out and plonked him on the table, and then shovelled some slop into him. And then - and then! - they started pushing white chocolate Cadbury's Buttons into his gob, as fast as he could process them. "Just one more!" they urged him.
My mother and I raised all four of our eyebrows at each other, utterly scandalised. We may once have disagreed about sugar - but those days are far behind us.
