JENNI MURRAY: My mother made me fat by always insisting I cleared my dinner plate 

Let’s be absolutely clear about what we’re talking about here. It’s fat — a word we’ve been told by obesity experts that we shouldn’t be using. We should say “chronic appetite dysregulation” instead. What nonsense. We all know exactly what fat means, regardless of our age, and kids are all too familiar with it.

NHS figures show that more than one in ten children are overweight or obese by the time they start primary school. By the time they reach the sixth year – between the ages of ten and eleven – the number has risen: 23.4 percent are obese and 14.3 percent are overweight, and that’s a shame.

Every child in school knows what fat means and every child who is fat will suffer. They will tease other children.

I, a formerly obese woman, know exactly how hurtful the term can be. But we can’t get around it. It’s there in common parlance and fantasy, new names because it won’t be heard on the playground. ‘Fat’ will.

I called the book I wrote about my weight struggle Fat Cow, Fat Chance. I was called ‘fat cow’ several times on the street. It was very hurtful to men ‘fat cow! I wouldn’t go there, would you?’

The “Fat Chance” in the title referred to the possibility of losing half my body weight as a result of drastic metabolic surgery. It was too late, in the early sixties, to recover in any other way. This is not the case with small children.

This month, findings from the University of Bath and the British Dietetic Association revealed that your parents can make you fat. In some cases the problem is simple. Too much junk food is put on the table, often ordered from a takeaway restaurant.

Too many parents who are struggling have never learned to prepare a healthy meal with the right balance of protein, vegetables and carbohydrates. It’s too easy to sit a kid down with a burger and chips. You can even have the food delivered to your door. No exercise necessary. There is no help for parents from the government, which seems determined to ignore her ex-food czar Henry Dimbleby’s advice to clamp down on junk food with a sugar and salt tax.

In my case, it wasn’t the food my mother produced that led to a lifetime of obesity. I was not a fat kid. She was a great cook who knew how to make a nutritious meal. However, she did fit the pattern shown in the new study. She ruined my relationship with food.

Her portions were always extremely generous. As a small child I was full quite quickly. I’d say, ‘Mom, I’m full. I can’t eat anymore.’ She always took it as a personal insult.

‘I’ve spent all morning cooking you that lovely shepherd’s pie. You will finish it. I want to see a clean plate and if you don’t eat it now, you will have it tonight.’

I did my best to please her by pushing the food down. Consequently, my ability to listen to my appetite and stop when I was no longer hungry was ruined. Parents must learn not only to eat healthy, but never to eat too much.

My mother also fell into a trap highlighted by the new research and now included in new national guidelines. She always thought she was fat – she wasn’t. She was constantly on a diet.

I have no doubt that her obsession with her weight had a devastating effect on me. I was always worried about how I looked. So began the pattern of dieting, losing weight, eating normally again, gaining more weight than before.

A classic example of a lifelong bad relationship with food.

So yes, your parents can make you ‘fat’. And there’s no point in erasing the word – this year it’s been taken out of all new editions of Roald Dahl’s children’s books. It is a commonly used word with a real meaning.

However, as parents we need to be aware of the damage we can do through our own behavior. We should know that obesity in children can lead to type 2 diabetes, a terrible disease that can lead to vision loss, stroke, kidney failure and loss of limbs.

The food industry could do better to reduce sugar and salt, and junk food should not be advertised to young people. But in the end, it is the parents’ responsibility to buy healthy food.

It makes sense to talk to kids not about dieting or feeling miserable while dieting or trying to control your weight, but about improving your health. Show them you like exercise (which my mom used to say she hated) and do it with them.

A program in Sweden offers new parents advice on nutrition and exercise, starting when the baby is eight months old. An early start can only be a good thing, but it’s never too late.

Just don’t wait until your child is in her 60s, you’re long gone and she needs to learn a healthy relationship with food all on her own.

Why be so mean, Your Majesty?

Angela Kelly, the late Queen’s right-hand man, expected to live forever in her gracious cottage on the Windsor Estate. The King kicked her out and bought her a house in the Peak District. But there is a catch.

She has reportedly been forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement preventing her from writing a third book about life in the palace.

Angela is 65. No job and probably not much money. To deprive your mother’s faithful servant of the opportunity to make a living feels mean, Your Majesty.

It’s a tired trope, but one that still holds true — that if a woman complaining about rape had a spicy sexual history, she must have agreed to it. The Law Commission proposes restrictions on the use of evidence of past sexual conduct. It’s time rape myths were dumped into the dustbin of history.

Victoria is right, 11 is too young for makeup

Harper Beckham is all 11 years old and already obsessed with makeup, apparently he’s perfected the art of “contouring.” But her mother, Victoria, who has her own beauty line and is equally evangelical about makeup, refuses to let her out of the house in the stuff. Quite right too!

All men should be more German!

German is such a great language to create words to suit every possibility.

Take Sitzpinkler. It is a man peeing and more Germans than other Europeans do that, it seems.

Sixty-two percent of Germans said they were sitting, compared to 23 percent of Britons. It is said to be the most natural position due to the structure of male plumbing. Imagine. No more mopping around the toilet. Come on guys. It is good for you.

Have a seat.

How bizarre that the Theater Royal Stratford East is urging whites to steer clear of a Tambo & Bones satire performance. Joan Littlewood, who ran the theater, must turn in her grave. Her Theater Workshop Company’s goal was to be socially and racially diverse.