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FOOD FOR THOUGHT June 2003 Walkers Crisps, in addition to encouraging Gary Mogadon to make those peurile TV commercials, as if we didn't see enough of him already on the BBC's Match of the Day programme, are re-launching their Free Books For Schools Programme. Since the scheme was launched in 1999 it has provided more than 6 million free books to schools across the country, we are proudly informed by Walkers.      Nothing of course is free, and in this case free means that Walkers will provide one book per one school for every five hundred tokens saved from their crisps packets. I hope one of the books is called 'How To Lose Lots Of Excess Blubber' and another is called 'What To Do When People Start To Call You Fatty', because there are surely going to be lots of grossly overweight children around if they have to munch their way through five hundred packets of crisps every time they need a new schoolbook.      Walkers of course are not the only food company who bribe schoolchildren to eat their products in exchange for educational materials. Cadburys are another, with their internet based Cadburys Learning Zone, which offers 'exciting and challenging materials for both school and home learning with online and download activities, fascinating facts and illustrations'. This must be the first programme ever which teaches children all about chocolate whilst at the same time teaching them how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, thus enabling them to calculate how many teeth they have lost due to eating the chocolate they've learned all about.      Cadburys also operate a scheme similar to that of Walkers and will benevolently stump up for sports equipment for schools in return for tokens collected from their range of confectionary. This of course encourages children to eat even more chocolate than they are already eating and having eaten it to take part in sports such as Five Ton-a-Side Football and The 100 Metres Very Low Hurdles Because If They Were Any Higher They Wouldn't Be Able to Jump Over Them Because They Are So Grossly Overweight, Better Make That Just Fifty Metres instead, these being the only sort of sports activities their bloated frames will allow them to participate in.      Naturally our old friends McDonalds have been into this sort of thing for years. In fact in yesterday's Daily Mail there is a photograph of Newcastle and England Footballer Kieran Dyer passing on tips to a clutch of schoolboy footballers wearing training bibs with a large McDonalds logo plastered on the front. Presumably Kieran Dyer himself eats McDonalds and after his woeful performance in his team's thrashing by Manchester United last Saturday you would have thought that both he and McDonalds would want to keep quiet about it, but no, footballers along with food companies seemingly being on the front row when brass necks were handed out.      Now it doesn't take much of a brain to work out that the consumption of Big Macs and playing football are about as compatible as the consumption of meat & potato pies and playing football, which isn't very compatible at all; indeed in a fair world along with shouts from the terraces of 'You fat bastard you ate all the pies' there would be at least an equal number of shouts of 'You fat bastard you ate all the Big Macs'.      I must confess to not knowing the full details of what exactly McDonalds offer up in the way of freebies to children in order to encourage them to eat Big Macs but if it is anything less than a three weeks all expenses paid trip to Disneyland for each Big Mac eaten the children are being done.      McDonalds would no doubt argue, as would Walkers, that their products, in addition to being tasty, are nutritious and a source of energy. Well crisps are not too vile, as far as the plain variety goes, vileness kicking in with a vengeance when 'flavours' are added, but to defend Big Macs because they are a source of energy is like defending Saddam Hussein because he found lots of work for torturers.      Walkers, Cadburys and McDonalds are just three of the many food companies who induce children, and through them their teachers and parents, to consume their products. I don't know whether they do it for altruistic reasons, whether they do it to salve their guilty consciences for encouraging children to eat junk food, or whether it is just pure greed, but if I had to put a bet on it my money would be on pure greed.