British newspapers and magazines are full of stories about childhood obesity, and these reports have started to crop up in the Maltese media, too. They all have a common thread: finding someone or something to blame for the fact that there are lots of fat children about. This is nothing new. The playgrounds of my childhood were thick with fat kids. We called them Billy Bunter or Fatso. In return, they thumped us, or knocked us over and then sat on us so we couldn’t get up.

I find them really annoying – the stories, not the plump kids. There is only one cause of getting fat: eating too much. This doesn’t mean eating too much in general, because there is a different standard for everyone. It just means eating more than your particular body can metabolise into energy before it starts making fat instead.

Because parents are the source of their children’s food, they, and no one else, are to blame if their kids are obese. They’re feeding them too much, or feeding them the wrong things. Recent news was that “television” is to blame for fat children, because they spend too much time in front of it instead of running around, and because the kids’ programmes are threaded through with adverts for junk food. So of course, we have to blame the adverts rather than the parents who give in and buy the junk food.

Now the latest is that chair-free classrooms are being introduced to some schools in Britain, after a study found that they could lead to substantial weight loss. Children burn so many calories while standing up instead of sitting down that the long-term effect on their waist-lines could be “significant”, apparently. The revolutionary approach is being spearheaded by a British expert on obesity, Dr James Levine, who is based at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, in the United States. School children in the experimental programme spend up to five hours a day standing at “lean and move bays”, where they work at laptop computers, white boards and vertical screens.

I can think of few things more dreadful than a class of 20 to 30 pupils all standing up and moving around while some poor person is trying to get them to pay attention. This obesity reduction programme misses the point that it is not the responsibility of the school to keep the pupils’ weight down, but the responsibility of their parents. The main reason that pupils are in a classroom is to learn, not to lose weight, and one of the things they have to learn is how to keep still and be attentive. If every generation of children until now has managed to do this, without getting unduly fat, then it should still be possible. The old recipe – keep children confined to a desk for lessons, then ring a bell and let them run wild during playground break – is still as sensible today as it was in the past.

John Dunford, the general secretary of the British Association of School and College Leaders, seems to feel the same way. He is insisting that parents should accept more responsibility for their children’s health. “This is more about what happens in the home than what happens in schools,” he told one newspaper. “Weight problems are down to sedentary lifestyles. Removing the armchair in front of the television would be more suitable.”

I don’t know about that. We had television, too, and we also had fatties. The myth that we all played in the street is not quite accurate. Lots of us played outside, yes – but in our neighbourhood there were children who weren’t allowed to do so. They were required to be little ladies and gentlemen indoors, rather than savages outdoors, and they weren’t fat. Conversely, there were quite a few fat kids on the streets, huffing and puffing away after that ball.

Some parents are having none of this, though. They’d like to find someone else to blame. One woman, interviewed by a British newspaper about what she thinks of a ban on junk food advertising on children’s television, said that she thinks it would be wonderful. “Because of all the advertising for this kind of food, my daughter is always demanding that I buy it for her” she said. “As a result, she is overweight.” Oh really? She’s overweight because of the advertising?

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What annoys me most about these stories, and similar ones in the Maltese media, is the underlying assumption that everyone is prone to obesity. This is clearly not true, but in this age of political correctness, we are supposed to pretend that everyone is at risk of getting very fat, so that the rest don’t get offended.

The fact is that some people get fat, and others don’t. Some people never get fat, as long as they live and no matter what they eat and how little they exercise. Some people get fat if they eat more than the recommended daily dose of calories and take no exercise. Some people eat like pigs all their lives and stay skinny, then begin to put on weight after 40. Some people get fat unless they live on a carefully controlled diet with plenty of exercise for the rest of their lives. It is obvious, though we are not allowed to say it, that the tendency to get fat or stay skinny, and in what way or at what age, is genetic. That’s why you see whole families of fat people – a fat mummy with her fat waddling infants, for example – and whole families of thin people. It’s not just because of what they eat and don’t eat; it’s because of how they metabolise it.

Scaring people about obesity has served to make them obsessed about what they eat, very often when there is no need for this. If a person has no genetic predisposition towards obesity, why should he or she be bullied or terrified into living a life of culinary sacrifice? I see parents buying low-fat milk for their children, and refusing to give them butter or “too much” bread. This is sad for the children and ridiculous of the parents.

Some children just don’t get fat. I was one of them. I ate sweets and butter all the time and I looked like four pipe-cleaners strung together (and before the dentists jump out at me, I only had one tooth-cavity, at the grand age of 12). For the rest of my life up to now I have eaten like a hungry horse and stayed a size 8 until I was 36. It was only after this that I began to put on weight, but what I am now is a normal size for my height – and this considering that I still eat more than most men do. I know that I will never be obese because if I did have a tendency to go that way, I would be the size of a battleship by now. Most people in my family are naturally thin, and were truly skinny as children; it’s genetic. My sons, as children, couldn’t have got fat if they ate junk food and chocolates all the time. I know this for a fact, because they did eat junk food and chocolates all the time, and guess what? Like both their parents before them, they looked like four pipe-cleaners strung together.

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The children who have a tendency towards obesity are immediately identifiable, and so all other children should not be plagued with restrictions as though they, too, were prone to the same risks. The first thing to do is to check out the parents. While fat parents – who may only have gained weight late in life – often have skinny kids, thin parents almost never have fat children. Don’t ask me why this might be; it’s just an observation. I don’t think it’s because mummy puts them all on a diet, though – I think it’s more likely to be that genetic thing.

Then all you have to do is look at the children themselves. A rangy girl who is all lanky limbs and sharp elbows – the kind of girl I was – is obviously not a candidate for obesity. You have to be seriously deluded to look at a child like this and control her intake of milk or butter. That kind of child can’t be fattened up no matter how hard parents try. Tell me about it. I used to chase my eldest son around the house begging him to eat another Mars bar. I used to feed him huge slabs of red meat dripping blood, vast doorsteps of hobz biz-zejt, and huge bowls of pasta with creamy sauce. I used to spend nights awake worrying because he was so thin and imagining all kinds of diseases. Then one day, I chanced upon a photograph of myself at that age, in a swimsuit, looking like I had spent the previous 15 months on starvation rations. So I relaxed a little.

You can see the children – and the grown-ups – who have a tendency towards obesity because they are a different shape to start with. They are usually endomorphs or mesomorphs, rather than ectomorphs. They have larger bones and a chunkier skeleton, and have a wider torso. Those thin little boys with knobbly knees and skinny arms are ectomorphs. Their stocky friends are endomorphs, and the mesomorphs are the in-betweens.

There’s another difference, too, which we overlook. Those who are at risk of becoming obese are the ones who pile the fat on all over their bodies. When they eat too much, they get fat arms, fat legs, fat torsos and even fat necks. Other people just pile the fat on around their hips, bosom and thighs (the women) or their stomachs (the men). They grow to a certain size, and then that’s it. To get any fatter, they have to be deliberately perverse, downing fatty food three times a day every day. But at this point, their stomachs usually rebel. They can only eat so much and no more.

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Children shouldn’t be denied butter, bread and full-fat milk. They shouldn’t even be denied sugar. What for deny them something pleasurable that does no harm if taken in moderation? More harm is caused by denying children all sweets than by letting them eat them. Sugar will only rot their teeth if they don’t brush them twice a day. You can’t blame cakes and sweets for rotting your children’s teeth if you haven’t disciplined them into brushing twice daily. Maltese children have terrible teeth, but it’s not because of the amount of sugar they eat. It’s because the habit of brushing teeth is not instilled into children here. I meet women all the time who tell me (it’s because I ask about these things, being naturally curious) that their children “refuse” to brush their teeth, or that that “never” do. They don’t seem unduly worried about it, either.

Toothbrushes and toothpaste came late to our culture, remember. At least we now wash our hair every few days. One of the things I remember most from school is how many children had really greasy hair – disgustingly greasy.

In policing our children’s diet so strictly, we are just setting them up for a lifetime of problems as great as those of obesity. We may even be the indirect cause of their obesity in adulthood. When children are routinely denied the things they crave, almost their first act when they are ‘free’ is to indulge and revel in the very thing they longed for but were denied. Being denied something only makes it more attractive and compelling. It’s today’s adult generation that’s stuck on chocolate, because when we were young, chocolate was a special treat.

We grew up with that understanding, and now that we are free to buy as much chocolate as we like, and to treat ourselves all the time, we do so. I had a friend who would triumphantly eat a large slab of Cadbury every night because – she told me – when she was a child her parents would ration a bar to one ‘square’ of chocolate every evening after homework, on the grounds that anything else would spoil her.

“Every night I would dream of running down to the kitchen while they were asleep and stuffing the whole bar into my mouth,” she said. “Now, I can do it.”

Today’s kids don’t regard chocolate as a treat because they have as much of it as they want. They’re not going to get all worked up about a Mars bar when they grow up, eating it and then feeling guilty. In our house, whenever there are sweets lying around, I am the one who eats them. I’ll walk into one of their bedrooms, spy a large bar of Cadbury, and casually ask: “Do you want that?” The reply inevitably comes: “No, I really don’t feel like it. You can have it if you want.” Oh goody. Every Easter for years there was a deluge of chocolate eggs and I would eat most of them. I’m convinced that their indifference to sweet things in their young adulthood is because they were constantly showered with the stuff by a bevy of doting aunts and grandmothers (and a mother desperate to fatten them up) when they were children.

There are enough adults around – mainly women – who regard food as an enemy rather than as a pleasant friend. We don’t need any more of them. The truth is that when you reach the age when playing with toys and games is no longer an option, eating is some of the most fun you are ever going to have. Take that pleasure out of your life, say ‘no’ to this, weigh that, ration the other, and well, I don’t know. All I can say is that those who regard food as though it might bite them, rather than the other way round, worry me. They worry me more than the fat people.