MasterChef champion says Theresa May has abandoned fight against childhood obesity because she’s not a mother
Thomasina Miers, who founded the Wahaca chain of restaurants, said the PM would realise the importance of nutrition if she had children
A FORMER MasterChef champion has accused Theresa May of abandoning the battle against childhood obesity because she is not a mother.
Thomasina Miers, founder of the Wahaca chain of restaurants, suggested that if the Prime Minister had children she would be tougher on junk food firms and would fund free school lunches.
The accusation is similar to Andrea Leadsom's argument that Mrs May would not make a good PM because she does not have children.
The Prime Minister and her husband Philip have previously spoken of their sadness at never having become parents.
Ms Miers, speaking at the Hay Festival on Sunday, attacked Mrs May for scrapping measures such as a ban on junk food ads and free school meals for young children, .
She said: "I think it is weird that a lot of experts spent five or six years doing a food bill that basically attacked the ability of supermarkets to aim marketing at children and that food bill was just chucked out the second Theresa May got into office.
"I felt like, 'Wow that’s really interesting,' because she had that whole deal with Andrea Leadsom making that comment about, 'Well you don’t have children.'
"That was quite a thing to say but part of me felt that if you had had children would you have done that, because it is so important that our children eat."
Taking aim at "depressing" plans to end free school lunches for young children, Ms Miers added: "How can it not be important for kids to sit down together?
"For many of these children, that is their only proper meal of the day."
The Tory manifesto proposes to abandon the policy of giving free lunches to pupils up to the age of seven, and replace them with free breakfasts at school.
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Mrs Leadsom doomed her leadership ambitions last summer when she said that she had "a very real stake in the future of our country" because she is a mother.
Mrs May and her husband went on to open up about their struggle to have children, saying: "It just didn't happen."
Ms Miers, 41, shot to fame when she won MasterChef in 2005, and has since built up a restaurant empire with more than two dozen branches of the Mexican restaurant Wahaca.