Literally. Tom Utley writes in the Daily Mail…. “Mr Ternouth’s thriller flooded back to me this week when I read of the Government’s plan to spend £224million of your money and mine on setting up a database, recording details of the lives of all 12 million children in England and Wales. Among other things, the Children’s Index will record whether a child’s parents are providing a ‘positive role model’, how the child is performing at school — and even whether youngsters are eating the daily five portions of fruit and vegetables recommended by the Government. Presumably, children will be questioned at school each morning on what their parents fed them the night before. The database, we are told, will be made available to social workers, teachers and doctors, who will have the power to flag up ‘concerns’ when they think that children are not meeting the criteria laid down by the state. This really is frightening stuff: an administration gone absolutely berserk with power. What earthly business is it of this government — or any future one — what my children eat, at my kitchen table, in my house? If I sound nervous, that is because there was a time about six years ago when our youngest — 13 today — would eat almost nothing but strawberry-flavoured liquorice shoelaces, HAP (honey and peanut butter) sandwiches and packets of crisps. How would that look on the Children’s Index? Oh, Patricia Hewitt — dear, sweet, kind Secretary of State for Health — I promise you that we tried to make him eat up his greens. He just wouldn’t. Please don’t take him away from us. “ For “the Children,” of course. Read the whole thing here .