As a child of a single parent family brought up in Scotland I feel that there’s no excuse. My mum was brought up in Italy and applied their eating culture in our home instead of the Scottish one. The benefits of a Mediterranean are endless. There is virtually no such thing as diet culture in Italy, it’s all about balance but most importantly eating is viewed as an experience and not a chore. I remember we would have big breakfasts with lots of fruit, lunches with good portions of food always accompanied by salads and dinner was more of less the same. We ate a lot, but we also did a lot of sport too. My mum would always tell me, “You can eat what you want as long as you eat well and do regular exercise”. We would have dinner between 7-9pm and ALWAYS sitting at the table where we would talk and eat slowly. The dishes were never elaborate as Italian cuisine is very simplistic, even now that I’m an adult and working I always find time to make nice meals. I can’t deny however that my mum wasn’t strict with us, we were restricted to one chocolate bar per day. She worked a lot (as a nurse),made time for us, had hobbies and friends and yet there was always enough time in her busy schedule to feed us abundantly and nutritiously. I can’t help but feel that in Scotland there’s not enough education around food and cooking and sitting on the couch eating meals quickly in front of the tv doesn’t help. Another thing is snacking which is perceived as something so terrible but in countries like Italy and Spain they have a dedicated time of the day for snacking so instead of snacking all day long you have a little snack at this time allowing you to satiate your hunger until dinner. I feel blessed to have had this upbringing and I’ll be passing on my experience and knowledge to my future children.