The first survey was by the British Nutrition Foundation on healthy eating, cooking and the origin of food covering 27,500 children across the UK , which found that:

• 29% of primary school pupils thought that cheese came from plants
• 10% of secondary students believed that tomatoes grew beneath the ground
• nearly 20% of children under 11 thought that chicken was the principal ingredient of fish fingers.

Just as worrying was a survey of 1,800 young people aged 14 to 25 issued by Barclays and the Personal Finance Education Group as part of My Money Week , which found that:

• 42% of those surveyed were unable to tell the difference between a bank statement that was in credit or overdrawn
• 13% didn’t know what an overdraft was
• 28% did not know whether it was better to opt for a lower APR than a higher one in taking out a credit card or loan.

The lazy conclusion from these two surveys would be to suggest that we’ve unintentionally bred a generation of ill-informed young people, and as a result we might as well abandon all hope that they will ever be able fund and support us in our old age! Although, that may be a bit harsh.

It is perhaps more fair to conclude that young people today have different skills compared to their parents.

I know when anything electronic of mine misbehaves our youngest daughter will have it fixed in a trice, unfortunately she’s away at university at the moment but I’ve got a long list for when she returns.

The jury is out on whether the skill set that allows my daughter to download the latest app on to my mobile phone to show me how far I’ve skied in a day is more relevant than being able to calculate the true cost of a pay day loan – ‘financial capability’ as we’re calling it these days.

The question is: is improving financial capability just about providing more knowledge and information? Regrettably, it’s almost certainly not the answer.

Returning for a minute to the ‘cheese grows on plants’ survey, more than three-quarters of primary children and nearly 90% of secondary school students knew they should eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

However, two-thirds of the primary and 81% of the secondary kids said they actually ate four portions or fewer a day and I think we can probably add most of their parents to that statistic if we’re being honest!

What’s to be done?

Does it matter that young people apparently don’t know where food comes from as long as they get their 1,500 calories a day?

Britain was a lot healthier in the days of rationing during and after the Second World War, yet under precisely that regime lard rather than kiwi fruit was a more common dietary item.

Of course it matters where the calories come from. The key challenge with food awareness and healthy living is converting knowledge that five-a-day, for example, is a good lifestyle choice into action that fulfils it.

The financial capability challenge you suspect has yet to reach the ‘knowledge’ stage.

In February the UK government announced that financial education is to be a compulsory subject in secondary schools in England from 2014.

A good step, but the providers of financial services also need to take some responsibility.

As product providers we should be able to explain our products and services in a way that engages potential customers rather than possibly confusing them with excessive industry jargon.

Otherwise, perpetuating financial ignorance may well become our generation’s unwanted gift to our children.