SCARING KIDS

I'm hopping mad.

It's a Monday morning and foster child came downstairs dressed for school and said;

"Did you know that toast can give you cancer?"

I'd seen it on the BBC news site on my ipad so I knew what she was talking about.

She saw it on her phone.

Christmas, don't our children have enough to worry about?

Who the heck thought it would be in the public interest to scare the bejesus out of them?

The foods identified are breakfast cereals, toast, pizza, chips crisps and cakes.

Thanks very much, thank you very very much indeed.

Oh and roast parsnips.

Information like this, unproven as it turns out, might be of use to some adults who overcook these items. I knew a mum once whose children had been relieved of her, who only ever cooked in a deep fat fryer. Didn't matter what she was knocking out for the kids tea apparently. Chips fair enough, but also; pies (savoury and sweet), fish-fingers, chicken, sausages, pork rashers, bacon...

Look, guys, cancer is a scary word to children, my foster kids are terrified of it, I suspect it was bandied about a lot as a boogie thing in homes where everyone smoked.

Our internet has filters for stuff we don't want our children to see. This sort of 'news' story should be filtered out.

It's not much of a news story anyway, I had an uncle Jim who was a journalist, he told me that anything that's not much of a news story gets shuffled so it's released on a Monday morning because there's not much news about on a Monday morning so your 'story' is more likely to get picked up.

I'm not saying the information shouldn't be got out there, but in a thoughtful way.

Scare kids off chips, crisps, pizza and cake and it might do them good in lots of ways, but what ARE we going to give them to eat without a battle?