You can spot the poor because they are fat

Anna Soubry described how the most deprived children at school used to be known as “skinny runts” in the past because they were malnourished. However, it was “deeply ironic” that children now suffer because their parents supply them with “an abundance of bad food”, she said.

Miss Soubry told The Daily Telegraph that parents should be more disciplined about insisting their children eat family meals and learn proper table manners.

The culture of “TV dinners” has eroded traditional structures of family life and led some homes to dispense with a dining table entirely, she said.

The minister spoke after warning food manufacturers that they must act to cut the amount of fat, sugar and salt in their products or face the prospect of legislation to tackle unhealthy meals. When I was at school you could tell the demography of children by how thin they were. You could see by looking at their eyes.” They would be described as “the “skinny runts” because they were not getting the right food. “When I go to my constituency, in fact when I walk around, you can almost now tell somebody’s background by their weight,” she said. “Obviously, not everybody who is overweight comes from deprived backgrounds but that’s where the propensity lies.”