WHEN my children were small the only real problem I had with their eating habits was guarding the larder to keep little hands off the next day's food supply or preventing them from chomping their way through three planned meal ingredients as little 'snacks'.

I was lucky, I suppose, that none of them were what we then used to call 'fussy eaters' but which are now in these enlightened times called 'eating disorders'.

Having been brought up on a diet of good plain food and a regulation 'if it's Monday it must be Shepherds Pie' regime, I became excited by all the possibilities of food and new ingredients when I began to cook and our diet was varied and often experimental.

I must confess that mealtime fare often depended on which cookery book I was eagerly devouring at the time and on a few occasions the family did baulk at some of my more adventurous dishes. I seem to remember universal disapproval when I bought a copy of Jane Grigson's wonderful book on pork cookery and produced grilled pig's ears (the request for pig ears at the butchers had also resulted in a certain amount of surprise coupled with enthusiasm on the part of the butcher who said he was pleased someone knew what to do with pig ears and didn't charge me for them).

I still maintain that the dish was delicious but there were screeches of horror and a flat refusal to taste so much as a lobe when they were dished up. As Jane Grigson had recipes for just about ever other part of a pig, and I do mean every part, the family became immensely suspicious when the work pork was mentioned and searched their plates for signs of toenails and nostrils or worse.

Despite this they all enjoyed most of the food and have grown up interested in both food and cooking. I never insisted anyone ate things they didn't like, nor finished food that wasn't to their taste. Food should be a pleasure not a punishment.

It never ceases to surprise me that today's children, having never been exposed to the rigours of boiled liver (courtesy of school dinners), ditto tapioca pudding, grey mashed potatoes and solid wedges of suet pudding, nor experienced food shortages, are often exceptionally fussy eaters. You could understand if they had been forced to eat my grandmother's dumplings

There are, apparently, more youngsters today who have eating disorders than ever before.

As any parent facing the problem knows, there is nothing remotely funny about coping with this. Providing food for one's children is an integral part of parenthood. When a child won't eat it can often seem like a direct rejection of parental love.

My eldest grandson has a limited list of foods he will eat, which at one time consisted mainly of Weetabix and milk. It is, I'm sure, thanks to Weetabix that he is strong, healthy and full of energy despite his dislike for most foods and although he has increased the list of what he will eat a little as he grows older, it is still small.

Doctors have been of little help; advice to my daughter ranged from force feeding him to stopping giving him the food he liked unless he ate other things. She fortunately ignored these little pearls of wisdom and just made sure he had extra vitamins and plenty of the food he would eat. He'll probably never be really interested in food, but, as he said to me one day 'at least I'm not the one whose going to get mad cow disease'. Nice child, eleven going on 37.

The other big change in eating habits these days is the onward march of vegetarianism.

No, this isn't going to be a piece knocking vegetarians. I wouldn't dream of it. Except to say I can never understand that if people don't like eating meat why do they insist on making their non-meat foods in the shape of meat items; ie cutlets, 'steaks' and turkey shaped Christmas roasts. Just a thought.

More and more children are becoming vegetarians, usually because they love animals and don't want to eat them. That's putting it bluntly but it's mainly true.

I have a granddaughter who declared she wouldn't eat any meat a year or so ago. I think I pushed her over the edge by taking her to a barbecue where there was a whole pig roasting on a spit, but she's stayed with it.

We are quite lucky in Britain, with a reasonable range of convenience food for vegetarians and almost every restaurant providing a vegetarian menu. It's not always been so. One friend remembers being served a full roast dinner, complete with gravy, in hospital. Only the meat was missing, replaced by a heap of stodgy and cold, macaroni cheese. Another said her mother thought it was alright to give vegetarians meat as long as they didn't know they were eating it, so used to puree soups to hide the contents.

The rest of Europe still has difficulty in believing that some people won't eat meat. The French take it as a personal insult and think they will change a lifelong vegetarian's mind by waving an enticing coq au vin under his or her nose. The Germans don't apparently have a word for vegetarian (or if they have it's a very long one and entirely unpronounceable), but then this is the land with the biggest sausage menu in the world. Scandinavia is alright if you like fish, and Mediterranean countries have great salads, vegetables and fish and shellfish.

Many children don't like vegetables much either and I pity the parents whose child will only eat frozen peas and the odd carrot. We bless firstly pasta, which comes in so many interesting shapes even if they all do taste the same. Then pizza, preferably home-made. And dear old Mr Tuna, who contains a lot of minerals and vitamins. We have to buy dolphin friendly tuna of course and we have to ban anyone from the house who looks like questioning the morality of eating fish on the grounds that they, the fish, might have feelings too. My son has just narrowly escaped this ban when he made a few ill thought out remarks about Tommy and Tracy Tuna and all their little tuna toddlers. A sharp kick on the shins soon sorted that out.

The only rule I have is that if I respect a vegetarian's beliefs and don't try to slip a sausage into their Spanish omelette then they must respect my opinions and not resort to vomiting sounds when I'm eating liver, nor go on about little fluffy bunnies or bouncy lambs when I'm enjoying a rabbit stew or a chop.

I always say I'll go nuts if they do.