This marketing is not a new thing, it is something that has been used to good effect for years.

Remember Popeye's motto: I'm strong to the finich, 'Cause I eats me spinach.

The creators of cartoon character Popeye: the sailor man used the medium of their comic strip / cartoon to market healthy eating.

They achieved this through Popeye's spinach obsession versus unhealthy eating through Popeye's friend J Wellington Wimpy, the most pitiable character in the entire strip.

So successful was this marketing ploy that spinach growers credited Popeye with a 33 per cent increase in the US spinach consumption.

The US Spinach capital Crystal City, Texas, erected a statue in honour of EC Segar and Popeye in 1937 for their influence on America's eating habits, making Popeye the first cartoon character ever immortalized in public sculpture!

Incontestably, this has to be the most successful healthy eating for kids campaign in history!

In India today, this brilliant marketing ploy is being used to shove all sorts of rubbish down children's throats.

Junk food advertisers maximise on kids' proclivity, marketing messages targeting children as young as two years old with free toys, cartoon characters, gimmicky packaging and interactive websites, ensuring that children pester their parents for the product.

And kids can be persistent and manipulative.

Every few months my son will wear me out and I will buy that 15 rupee packet of 'instant pasta' for a ridiculous toy that we could get at a balloon seller for Rs 2.

At times like that, I remind myself that that packet has far more expensive consequences than its effect on our budget.

I give my son the toy and chuck out the rest of the packet. Wasteful as that may sound to some, I have yet to come up with any way in which I can use that without any living person ingesting it.

It is pure refined flour (maida) – which is why it cooks so fast – with zero nutritional benefit, containing, in addition to 'fortified' ingredients, taste enhancers, and requiring an optional 1 tbsp of butter added to it.

That much butter would make anything taste good!

A ban on advertising junk food is one of the ways many Western countries deal with this issue.

Photograph: Tommy Hilfiger's America Collection