Carrots As Well As Candies by Jane Thurnell-Read

I knew children’s attitudes to eating vegetables was changing when I visited my local store/shop. I had to pick my way through the kid’s bikes left carelessly on the sidewalk/pavement in order to get into the shop. Inside the store most of the children had a bag of candies/sweets in one hand and a couple of carrots in the other. There were no adults telling them what to buy: they had decided for themselves that they wanted carrots.

The next day I read in the newspaper that Innocent’s smoothies were outselling Sunny Delight in the UK. How the mighty have fallen. At one point Sunny Delight was the 12th best-selling grocery brand in the UK. Sunny Delight is described by its manufacturer as a ‘refreshing fruit flavoured beverage that contains Vitamin B1 and C’. The manufacturer also tells us it doesn’t contain gluten and caffeine.

A health drink, then? Hardly, although it is usually positioned in supermarkets in the chiller cabinet next to the fruit juices, so the unwary can easily believe it is. In fact, Sunny Delight does not need to be refrigerated unless the bottle has been opened. SunnyD Tangy Original Style contains 2% of each of 5 concentrated juices. In addition it has gums to thicken it and fructose to sweeten it. Kath Dalmeny, Policy Officer at the Food Commission, a respected, independent consumer organisation in the UK has said:

"We realised that it was a product roughly equivalent to a Coca Cola-type product."

Compare this with Innocent’s smoothies. Richard Reed, one of the founders says this:

“We buy fruit direct from the growers, we squeeze it and bottle it and sell it. It’s that simple.” So I’m delighted to know that Innocent smoothies are now outselling Sunny Delight in the UK.
(The Times magazine 14 Jan 2006)

So why are the kids and the grownups eating and drinking real fruit and vegetables rather than sugar/fructose concoctions?

In the UK at least this must in part be down to the introduction of fruit and vegetables into the school curriculum. The School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme is a national government programme which gives all children aged four to six in schools a free piece of fruit or vegetable each school day. Initially a pilot scheme was carried out, and this was reviewed in 2003.

This found that over a quarter of children and their families ate more fruit at home after their school joined the scheme; nearly half of all the parents questioned thought the scheme had made them more aware of the importance of fruit for a healthy diet. Although the scheme offers fruit, just over one in 10 parents reported that they were also eating more vegetables at home as a result of the scheme. It was particularly encouraging that the scheme was generally having most effect on younger and poorer parents. A report published in December 2005 on the effect of the scheme in Northern Ireland reported that 62% of parents were buying more fruit because their children asked for it.

These results are encouraging but we still have a long way to go. Most authorities agree that a minimum of 5 portions of fruit and vegetables need to be eaten every day, and many authorities recommend nine or more portions – equivalent to four and a half cups – for the average adult. According to the Harvard School of Public Health the average American gets just three servings of fruit and vegetables a day, and as this is an average it means a lot of people are getting none or may be one portion a day.

But why are fruit and vegetables so important? Most people know that fruit and vegetables contain vitamins and minerals, but they are also packed with other goodies such as antioxidants.

Antioxidants are important because they counteract free radicals, but what are free radicals? Free radicals are a natural by-product of the body turning food into energy (ATP). The body has mechanisms to deal with these free radicals, because they are highly dangerous left to their own devices. An excess of free radicals can be caused by smoking, sunbathing, frying food, infections, excessive exercise (note normal exercise does not have this effect!), stress, radiation and polluted environments.

You can see from this list that most of us will be producing far too many free radicals for the normal body processes to cope with, so we need to be sure that we take in enough antioxidants to de-activate these excess free radicals.

Excess free radicals are a problem because they attack the body itself, damaging key cellular molecules. A lot of the symptoms of ageing are signs of free radical damage. When cell membranes are attacked by free radicals they either become hardened so that nutrients cannot get into the cells, or they may be punctured so that the cell collapses as the cell fluid drains out. In the skin this leads to skin which is leathery or wrinkled and sagging; in the joints this causes the synovial fluid to lose its lubricating quality and cause stiffness, in cells it may damage the DNA causing inappropriate cell division and the possibility of cancer. Free radical activity has also been implicated in heart disease, cataract formation and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Quantity is not the only important consideration in eating fruit and vegetables, variety is also important. Different antioxidants work in different areas of the body: some are unable to get through the gut wall, some work on the surface of the cells, while others work inside cells. Fortunately we don’t need to know which antioxidants work where, because eating a wide range of fruit and vegetables, particularly as regards color will ensure that we eat a wide range of antioxidants. Eat green and red grapes, eat orange fruit and vegetables, and try new fruit and vegetables.

So, whatever your age, eat carrots as well as candy, and (unlike with most candy) bright colour is something to be positively sought out.