John Miller, a podiatrist in Tauranga, has raised the spectre of young people with malformed feet – due to running barefoot.

Surely this is a blatant promotional effort on his behalf. Kiwi kids have always run and played barefoot. Is there any data to suggest that we have worse feet than our counterparts in areas where they don’t run in barefeet?

I’d be more concerned with the popularity of Crocs. Anecdotally I had heard that ACC has noticed a sharp increase in ankle injuries due to the rise in the number of people wearing this type of footwear. This could be a croc of sh*t, but the experience of one of our children wearing Crocs all Easter would support the theory – I got tired of seeing him sprawled on the ground bleeding from the knees.

In our family Crocs are now banned from being worn outside.