If I hear one more person ridiculing junk food, I swear I will bite the head off a live tomato, kick it to the bottom of our garden and hurl it into the compost heap, which, having been attended to about ten times a day by my husband, is approximately the height of Ben Nevis.

Everyone is at it. The Government, the media, Jamie Oliver. How we should be giving our children healthy food and ditching the rubbish. Well, excuse me, but I love junk food. Not only do I eat it myself on a regular basis - burgers, chips, the lot (although I draw the line at chicken nuggets) - but I feed it to my children as well, and they love it too. In fact, they plead with me for more of the same.

And I'm only too willing to oblige. After all, I'm pressed for time and food that you can shove on a baking tray and stick in the oven for 15 minutes - and which the kids will eat without a glimmer of protest - is something of a godsend. At least it is in our house.

I know I'm not the only mother to feel this way. I've taken my daughters to tea at other children's homes and even those perfect mums with the "everything that passes my child's lips should be totally organic, preservative-free home produce" attitude crack under the strain when there are numerous hungry mouths to feed. They quickly latch on to the fact that nettle soup, whole-wheat maltloaf and carrot sticks do not pass muster with children.

Not only are they too young to know the meaning of the word 'abattoir', and not only do they have no interest whatsoever in becoming a member of Compassion in World Farming, but they actively crave 'junk' food. They love turkey pieces shaped like dinosaurs and alphabet chips.

I know that chicken nuggets are about as tasty as compressed cardboard, and I hate the idea of intensive factory farming (what's the alternative, there are no free-range chicken nuggets?) but they're so easy. And my daughters prefer them to shepherd's pie, steak and kidney pudding or vegetable stew. You see I am not so crazy as to give them junk food every night (just the nights when I'm cooking), and I know the value of a balanced diet with lots of fruit and vegetables.

My children are presented with healthier options, and they eat them, but not with relish. The stew that I took pains preparing (three hours including ingredient-shopping time as opposed to 15 minutes for the nuggets and chips) went down like a bowl of cat food.

I learned to feed the family with minimum stress early on. Urged by a concerned friend to ditch the jars of supermarket baby food in favour of home-pureed stuff that you stick in ice cube trays and defrost, I gave it a go. After using the blender for the first time in a decade, dividing the horrible-looking mix into trays, struggling to thaw it out, then having it rejected, I would have found it easier to go out, kill a live pig and stick it on a spit. So it was back to jars. And it hasn't done my children any harm. They haven't grown extra heads or exhibited any odd behavioural traits.

I'm not saying that 'junk' or 'convenience' food is all you should eat. Clearly, as anyone who has seen the film Supersize Me will testify, it is not. But it gets such a bad press, and there is a welcome place for it in the lives of most families - in particular mine.

Updated: 08:42 Tuesday, March 22, 2005