Do you eat meals? I thought everyone did.

But then something happened when I was having a conversation with one of my sixth-form students.

I was talking to her about how much I enjoy making a roast dinner on a Sunday, when a girl nearby looked into the middle-distance and said out loud, but as if to herself, “I never eat meals.”

I couldn’t work out what she meant because …I mean, she was alive. How could she never eat meals?

Grazing, not eating

We talked a bit more, and I discovered that what she meant was that all she ever did was graze.

She rarely - or “never” in that typically extreme teenage vernacular - had anything that coalesced into what could be called a “meal”.

This was not a neglected child and, in fact, when I widened the discussion to include more of the class, it turned out that her experience was not at all unusual.

I’m not talking about the middle-class concern with sitting around a table, important though I think that is. I’m talking about simply having a meal.

From there I started to take more notice of what the sixth-formers were eating. Often, they would go out around lunchtime and return with a large bag of some kind of potato chip, a large bag of sweets, maybe a cookie and a litre bottle of some kind of fizzy drink.

Now I could see this for what it was - not just an unhealthy snack but the substitute for any kind of meal.

Dieting dramas

Then there’s the world of dieting and even of anorexia.

These are complicated issues that can easily be exploited. For example, when Kim Kardashian posted an Instagram picture of herself sucking on a lollipop - #suckit - Jameela Jamil responded to her post by tweeting: ”No. F**k off. No. You terrible and toxic influence on young girls.”

Why? Because the lollipop was being sold as an appetite suppressant - perfect for any insecure, body-conscious, potentially anorexic adolescent.

So, with bingeing snack food on one side and dangerous dieting on the other, what’s going on?

Emotional eating

The most obvious answer is the role that food plays in emotion regulation.

All of us can convince ourselves that the aches of unwanted emotion are actually the pangs of hunger.

But the teenage double-whammy of raging hormones and nascent emotional intelligence can turn this process up to fever pitch. Especially in uncertain times.

Familiar food with a quick rush of salt, fat or sugar helps to distract from intense emotions - disguised as hunger pangs - at least in the short term. And when the last Dorito is gone but the ache is still there, it can easily seem like the obvious solution is more food.

Then when you start to put on weight, you have Kim Kardashian on hand with appetite suppressants at the ready.

Food is now a war to be won, rather than a human experience to be enjoyed.

Student wellbeing

In education we’re starting to realise that it’s worth paying attention to how we (staff and students alike) are feeling.

Perhaps we should also pay more attention to what we’re all eating. Not to judge. But to notice.

Let’s talk with students about the role that emotion plays in eating. We probably all have our own examples we could share, of cracking open the ice cream when we’ve had a terrible day or eating a packet of crisps as a substitute for a proper lunch.

Let’s find the humour in it while also opening young people’s eyes to this important issue.

And let’s also find time to share our own love of food wherever we can.

Again, all this is about is noticing. It’s about helping young people who’ve started to see food as a battleground, or who have stopped noticing it at all, to re-engage with this amazing human experience.

And to that point: Maris Pipers are best for roast potatoes and sherry really brings out your mashed swede.

Aidan Harvey-Craig is a psychology teacher and student counsellor at an international school in Malawi. His book, 18 Wellbeing Hacks for Students: Using psychology’s secrets to survive and thrive, is out now. He tweets @psychologyhack