If there is a phrase guaranteed to make me cringe more than just about any other, it's "school dinners" - well, that and "Premiership champions Manchester United".
School dinners were what I hated most about school. When Jamie Oliver started his campaign to rid our educational institutions of unhealthy muck I was right behind him, but when I looked at the menus that he was attempting to change I did have a little twinge.
The unidentified frying objects served to children before St Jamie may have been a health time-bomb but compared to the stuff we were served back in the '70s it looked... well, edible.
There were two things which made lunchtimes an ordeal at my junior school. First, in contrast to the menus least liked by Jamie there was a choice -- albeit between Turkey Twizzlers and chicken nuggets. We had a choice, too - between eating what was put in front of us or facing punishment.
Second was that practically every day I was handed a plate which invariably contained one or more of my three of my least favourite ingredients - instant mash plonked on the plate with an ice-cream scoop, baked beans (yuck) and processed peas (the smell of which used to make me feel like vomiting. Once I actually did).
Perhaps the worst thing of all was the fact that we children were forced to eat this stuff. Every day we were told that the starving children of Africa would be grateful for the chance to eat school dinners. I suspected otherwise. Even if I were starving in the middle of the Sahara desert, I doubt I would be able to stomach those grey boiled potatoes.
It was only slightly better when I got to JFS. Due to kashrut requirements there was no longer watery, tasteless custard for dessert. However in its place was watery, gloopy parev custard substitute. There was still little or no choice and, due to kashrut rules, we weren't allowed to bring in packed lunches.
This has all come back to haunt me now because my daughter, six-year-old Lucy, has started to have school dinners herself. Initially, she did not take to them.
"What did you have?" I asked her.
"It was this disgusting pasta with white stuff on it," she said.
"Oh," I replied. "What did it taste like?"
"I didn't actually taste it," she answered, looking at me as if I was crazy. I felt for her, I really did.
So, for a while Lucy had packed lunches, which she liked little better. In the morning I would butter a bagel or make a cheese sandwich. And in the afternoon, there would be that dread moment when I flipped open the Tupperware to find the lunch completely undisturbed - the only evidence that Lucy had even opened the lid was the empty packet of crisps crumpled in the corner.
But then, one day, she asked if she might perhaps try school dinners again, because her friends Jada, Jeyda and Jessica had all started eating them (for some reason she only seems to make friends with girls whose names start with a J).
I looked at the menu thoughtfully printed out by the school. There was a choice of pasta dishes, a veggie option, salads and presumably a dessert trolley and petit fours. Lucy loves the fact that she gets pudding every day and I love the fact that I no longer have to make a sandwich in the morning and throw it away in the evening.
All of which gives me more time to organise my latest project - a nuclear strike on the pea processing plant.