If you’d asked me, when I was a child, what I loved best about holidays, the answer would have been easy. It wasn’t the sunshine, or the seaside, or the ice creams.

It was the breakfasts. Specifically: the Kellogg’s Variety Packs.

A Kellogg’s Variety Pack was something you could only ever have on holiday. Back in the 1980s, anyway. I’ve checked with other people who grew up then too, and it was exactly the same for them. The rules were firm. At home, breakfast had to be healthy. But on holiday, your parents would graciously permit you to eat something fun, instead. Albeit from an absolutely tiny box.

All across Britain, siblings would squabble over which of them would get the tiny box of Coco Pops, and which would get the tiny box of Frosties. Those two were everyone’s favourites. If we’d been more sensible, of course, we’d have paced ourselves. Planned more wisely.

Because scoffing the Frosties and Coco Pops right at the start of the holiday meant that it was all downhill from there. As a result, just a few mornings later, you were confronted with the forlorn choice between a tiny pack of Rice Krispies, a tiny pack of Corn Flakes. Talk about depressing. You might as well have been at home.

Tell that to children nowadays, of course, and they wouldn’t know what you were wittering about. Kellogg’s Variety Packs don’t seem remotely special to them – mainly because modern parents tend to be far less strict. Plus, of course, there are now so many exciting new cereals to choose from. The shelves of every supermarket are stuffed with sugary rubbish. 

The latest addition to the cereal aisle, however, has caused quite a stir. A few weeks ago, Nestlé launched a KitKat breakfast cereal. Purely in the spirit of journalistic inquiry, I decided to try it. It tasted, I was not entirely surprised to find, utterly disgusting. Forget turning the milk brown. It turned me green.

In the interests of balance, however, it is my duty to report that not everyone agrees. Because, perhaps inevitably, my nine-year-old son absolutely loved it.

Still, maybe I shouldn’t admit that I let him even try it. Remarkably, the KitKat cereal is a quarter sugar. Various leading health charities are so appalled by this that they’ve written a furious joint letter to the Times – in which they lay the blame squarely with the Government. Ministers, they fume, have “failed to take appropriate action” against “the flood of unhealthy food… The case for Government intervention is clear.”

Personally, though, I find this pious nanny-statism even harder to stomach than the cereal. It’s not the Government’s responsibility to ensure our children eat a healthy diet. It’s ours. So, if British children are consuming too much sugar, the people to blame are their parents, not Rishi Sunak. Unless, that is, the Prime Minister has been sneaking into our houses in the dead of night and slipping Mars bars under our children’s pillows. But I assume he hasn’t. He’s a fairly busy man. I’m not convinced he has the time.

To be clear: my son is perfectly slim and healthy, and I only let him try the KitKat cereal as a one-off treat. I certainly don’t intend to buy another box. But if he does plead for more, and I weakly relent, it will be no one’s fault but my own.

Obesity is widespread not because the Government is irresponsible – but because we are.

Would you try the new KitKat breakfast cereal? Tell us what you think in the comments below.