Apparently schools are conducting inspections of lunchboxes and children are being lambasted for daring to bring such things as biscuits, even ones lovingly made by their grandmothers, into class.

And it's not just our lunchboxes that are in the firing line. You can't take a breath without being bombarded by messages via television, magazines, or social media about what we should, or should not, be one, eating ourselves, and two, serving up to our families.

Indeed, every time I see that advertisement for Lite N Easy I think about getting a lifelong subscription because it would take away all the thinking involved with actually having to eat. Heavy is hard, but having to think about food is harder still.

Because remember when we didn't have to think about it? Remember when you just cooked and ate food because it was good for you? It was just good for you, period. There was no talk about nutritional breakdowns, no analysis of glycaemic index, no discussion whether it was organic or free range, or what its kilojoule count was. You ate it because it was food, and it tasted nice, and if you didn't eat it the starving children in Africa would more than welcome to your dinner you ungrateful child.

You ate food because that's what your mother (and let's face it, how many fathers in a certain generation did the cooking? I think the only meal my father ever served up was the occasional Friday night fish and chips he picked up on the way home from the pub) served you. Meat and three veg, meat and four veg, spaghetti bolognaise, stew. That was about it. If you were lucky you got to go to nan's once a week for dinner and that was a posh meal.

I sometimes think one of the reasons the obesity rates continue to soar - 29 per cent of Australian adults are now obese, compared to 16 per cent in 1980 - is that we're thinking too much about food.

We're too busy breaking it down, Instagramming it, bragging about what latest gluten free, dairy free, Pete Evans approved meal we've cooked, that we've forgotten why food was important in the first place.

Yes, okay, we need it as fuel. We have to have the energy to hunt and gather somehow. But for me the real reason why food is important is the reason why I put dinner on the table every night without too much complaint (from me, sometimes there is much complaint from the other diners) is that it gives me some excuse to force my family into the same conversational space for at least half an hour.

I'll give you that forcing your family around a dinner table might not do much for decreasing obesity rates. (Although data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that children who do not eat dinner with their parents at least twice a week were 40 per cent more likely to be overweight, compared to those who do. The same data shows that children who eat regular family dinners are also less likely to be truant from school, less likely to have trouble with drugs and alcohol, and show better academic performance.) But it can't hurt can it? You'll pause and sit with your family and talk about your day and the fun you had, and the other stuff that wasn't so much fun, and then, maybe you'll go outside for a game of handball or a walk around the block with the dog. Eat, move. It's pretty simple.

I'm interested to read Eat Real Food, (Macmillan, $29.99, out April 1) the latest book from David Gillespie, former corporate lawyer and fatty, who, after doing extensive research, decided it was sugar that was making him fat (and later seed oils), so he cut it out and lost 40kg.

I can't say I'm an advocate of the quitting sugar brigade – I had Weet-bix the other day (one of the few breakfast cereals he does recommend) and I revelled in the teaspoon of sugar I sprinkled over the banana on top – but the bits I have read, and I mainly flicked through the chapter entitled "The Practical Bit" – because let's face it, if it's not practical, most of us aren't going to apply the science – showed that some of his advice is just good old common sense.

As a father of six, he's made a concerted effort to get his kids eating off the no sugar no seed oil plan but he also advocates things such as not using food as a reward, or only eating fried food at home as well. Diet changes that don't involve thinking about the actual food. That's not the main message in the book, far from it, there is still much scientific discussion of fructose and saturated fats that it might lose you, but it's good to see some commonsense advice too.

For in the end, eating and cooking and food should all be about commonsense. Eat well, move more, enjoy the company of family and friends, talk, laugh, clean up the mess. And if nanna wants to bake some biscuits for her grandchildren's lunchboxes as a little token of love and affection and flour then that about sums up what food should really be about.