I had an experience a few days ago while reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar that has made me realise that this book no longer has a place in Modern British society.

While mummy was in Sainsbury’s last Sunday, we sat in the car and read a book - The Very Hungry Caterpillar. However, I stopped reading it when we got to the page about his junk food binge because I think it sets a very bad example for children.

He spends five days eating fruit, and he still isn’t satisfied, so he decides to go on some sort of unhealthy feeding frenzy until he gets a stomachache - it’s hardly surprising, is it?

My impressionnable four-year-old now thinks that it is normal to consume one piece of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake and one slice of watermelon in one sitting.

I know that the caterpillar ‘ate through’ the foods, but if we compare the body mass of a caterpillar and the body mass of my son and then extrapolate this data it would be a fair conclusion to assume that he would consume the entirety of these items.

I then ran it all through a nutritional calculator, and this was when I got really angry. 2415 calories in one sitting is nothing short of madness for a child who would usually need just 1200-1400 per day, and the saturated fat would be a whopping 195% of an adult’s recommended daily allowance.

Sodium would be 238%, which would do his heart no favours whatsoever, and 173g of sugar would put him right on the highway to diabetes.

Here’s the part that makes my blood boil. The caterpillar feels a bit ill for a few days, goes for a nap, and then emerges as a beautiful butterfly. Why is he being rewarded so handsomely for his sheer gluttony?

I could rant on for ages, but suffice it to say that I will not be reading this book again to my children. I am calling upon major bookstores to stop selling it, or at the very least encourage the publisher to make some changes so that he only gets a stomachache after eating too much wholesome, organic produce.