There’s this television commercial of a child in a school cafeteria with a soda, opening a bag of chips.

The chips go everywhere and she’s embarrassed.

The problem is solved with a plastic zippered bag.

I don’t know which would upset my daughter’s school more, the plastic bag or the chips.

The sad reality however, is that my daughter would dearly like to be that child in the commercial.

Every day she carts her healthy lunch to school — carrot sticks and hummus, apples or oranges — in reusable containers.

Back most of it comes at the end of the day.

The only time it doesn’t come home again is when she’s left the plastic containers on the field somewhere.

When the containers are finally relocated they are usually full of mildewing carrot sticks.

Is starvation preferable to an unhealthy diet?

My daughter was not pleased when I said she had to participate in a healthy lunch box competition at school.

“But I don’t want a healthy lunch,” she sobbed.

“Look,” I said, “your school already makes you take a healthy lunch, what’s the difference?”

“It makes a difference.”

What she needs is a little education, I thought; a little mindwashing of the positive kind.

So I typed “why should we eat healthy foods (for kids)” into the YouTube search engine.

It’s amazing how many badly made videos there are on the internet on this topic.

We watched as a little banana danced around on the screen and the overly cheerful narrator, with a heavy German accent, explained the health benefits.

“You must eat healthy foods, children.

“Otherwise you’ll get fat, and nobody wants to play with a fat child.”

“Okay,” I said, “that’s not quite what I was going for. Let’s try another.”

The next voice said: “Moms, we know you try and try to get your children to eat healthy foods.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” I said getting excited.

“Well, buy this healthy shake and all your problems will be solved.”

I felt like crying. Clearly, YouTube wasn’t the answer.

“Look,” I said to her, “are there any fruits that you actually like to eat?”

“Yes, a banana, sometimes.”

“Take that then. Can you think of any benefits to eating a banana?”

“It’s easy to peel?”

“Good enough,” I sighed.

Of course, all the healthy food just came home again at the end of the day, the banana looking a little worse for the trip.