The mother in Bergamo, northern Italy, started her son on a macrobiotic diet, which is typically a vegetarian diet consisting of whole grains, cereals and vegetables, in 2006.

But the father, who is divorced from the mother, complained that she had made the decision without consulting him and that the diet put his son’s health at risk, the Eco di Bergamo reported.

Despite the mother’s dietary regime, the father took his son out for meals at McDonalds and prepared desserts, meat and dairy dishes on weekends, when he had custody of the child.

The father’s mother, the boy’s grandmother, also fed him foods which broke the diet, including gorgonzola and sausages.

According to the child's mother, the boy would come home after the weekend with a stomach ache.

The father eventually took the matter to court so that the boy’s diet could be decided once and for all.

In mid-April an Italian court ruled that the mother must prepare meat at least once a week for her child. The father, meanwhile, was ordered not to feed the boy meat more than twice at weekends.

This isn’t the first time a child’s diet has been at the centre of a court battle in Italy.

In January a father in Turin was sentenced to nine months in prison after he forced his teenage daughters to go on a macrobiotic diet and do intensive skiing, telling them they were “too fat”.