MARTEL MAXWELL: Children’s play areas should have healthy snacks on offer too

I won’t (she says hopefully) be the only parent to have let the routine slide over summer.

With no school bell come 9am, a strict time for bed has disappeared too, along with the discipline to stop the boys eating their body weight in sweets.

But enough was enough when I realised their new breakfast regime was the “achievement” of half a Weetabix, followed by a two- fingered Kit-Kat and five Percy Pigs.

And so, in the cafe queue at a soft play centre in Dundee, I asked for a cup of tea for me and some fruit for the kids.

“I’m afraid we don’t have any,” the lady said.

“We used to. In fact, we got loads of fruit delivered for free from a wholesaler, but we couldn’t give it away. Literally.

“We had a sign saying ‘free fruit, help yourself’ and no one touched it.

“It was going to waste so we asked the wholesaler to stop delivering.”

This struck me as slightly tragic.

It’s one thing not being able to buy fruit – something that’s all too common.

I give you the time I asked the woman carting her snacks trolley through the train carriage if she might have a piece of fruit to balance tea for the night – a packet of crisps, a packet of peanuts and chocolate bar, all that she was otherwise offering on a five-hour journey back from work.

And do you know what she said?

She laughed and said “good one” at my request.

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But not being able to give healthy snacks away to growing kids when their parents are on hand to say “come on son, have an apple then you can have the cake” is a crying shame.

Bucking the trend are places like Tesco, which offers a box of fruit from which kids can help themselves while their parents shop.

I wonder if they too have to bin unwanted free fruit.

Far from being some kind of preachy health nut who feeds their kids pumpkin seeds (though I’ve just discovered they are surprisingly tasty and a big bag in Asda is just a pound) I’m holding my hands up to getting it wrong.

Cookies, chocolates, crisps, lollies, chewy sweets – you name it, my kids have had it these past few weeks.

But when a parent wants to get it a bit more right (led possibly in part by the fear of an upcoming dentist visit) the sad truth is that in Dundee and doubtless further afield, when you’re “captive” in the many places on offer to entertain the kids while off school, too often there is no alternative to processed and sugary foods.