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CNN Live At Daybreak
America, Eat Your Fruits and Vegetables
Aired June 19, 2001 - 07:43 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: I know you've seen them, you've read them, you've said, I should, I should, I should. There have been many studies promoting the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables, yet Americans still are not getting enough of those foods in their diet.
CNN's medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen explains why.
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ANNOUNCER: Fruits and vegetables, you know, you ought to eat more of them.
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ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Have you ever heard of Produce Man? We didn't think so.
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ANNOUNCER: Eating five servings a day is a great way to stay healthy.
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COHEN: He's the mascot for a government fruit and vegetable promotion campaign. But despite the best efforts of produce man and the government's other ads...
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GROUP (singing): Fruits and vegetables are the happening flavor!
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COHEN: Consumption of fruits and vegetables has stayed almost the same for the last five years, about five servings per day. But that number includes French fries, potato chips and even fruit- flavored candy.
This, though studies show people know fruits and vegetables help prevent diseases such as stroke and cancer. Just this week, another study showed eating fruits and vegetables lowers risk of heart disease.
(on camera): So why are fruits and vegetables such a hard sell? After all, public awareness campaigns have managed to get people to wear their seat belts and to stop smoking. So what's so tough about a few stalks of broccoli or a few apples?
(voice-over): In some ways, it all comes back to Produce Man. Kids probably don't know him, but you can bet they know Ronald McDonald and Chuck E. Cheese, cheerleaders for high-fat food.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE AS CHUCK E. CHEESE: I stand for fun!
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DR. WILLIAM DIETZ, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: If one compares the amount of money that we have spent on the promotion of fruit and vegetable consumption to the amount of money spent on more general food advertising, it's hardly a surprise that we haven't changed the needle on fruit and vegetable consumption.
COHEN: Dr. Dietz and other experts say they know they have to start young, so we asked a few children how they'd move that needle. The answers? Surprisingly mercenary.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bribe them.
COHEN (on camera): Bribe them with what?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Money.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would give them a Gameboy Advance if they ate their vegetables.
COHEN (voice-over): Dr. Dietz actually had a similar thought. He's fuzzy on just how to do it, but he says raise the price of unhealthy foods, and that should work.
Judith Stern, a nutritionist whose own son says he doesn't like fruits and vegetables, has another idea.
JUDITH STERN, UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA: What can the government do? I want to see George W. eating broccoli in the White House, how's that? And his father visiting him and eating broccoli. Let's get Barry Bonds, instead of a bat, he can have a banana. And get kids to help eat fruits and vegetables.
COHEN: In other words, use the same techniques used to sell anything else in America. Make the cost low, and keep it cool and hip.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
There appear to be some practical reasons why people say they don't eat fruits and vegetables; they say that they're just less convenient, and also that the taste is not consistent. For example, people say, Gee, I bought a peach from the grocery store last week, and it was delicious; I went back this week, and it was just terrible and I had to throw it away. So people often cite practical reasons why they don't eat fruits and vegetables.
MCEDWARDS: But Elizabeth, if even the nutritionist in your story has trouble is there hope for the rest of us? What kind of tricks does she try?
COHEN: She said while her son was growing up -- and she doesn't claim that she was entirely successful -- she tried to do is she tried to make them as convenient and attractive as possible. For example, she would buy the little baby carrots that are prepackaged, that are sort of little and cute. She would cut an apple up into wedges, and she said that her son sort of had an easier time with that than with an entire apple. She actually carried a knife around with her, so that when they were out, when he was a little boy, and he wanted a bag of chips, she could just get the apple and cut it up for him right then and there. So she had a knife in her pocketbook at all times.
MCEDWARDS: And raising the price of unhealthy foods or lowering the price of fruits and vegetables -- is that really what drives people?
COHEN: You know what, there have been a couple studies that actually did seem to work. What they did was that for the temporary time of the study, they subsidized the price of fruits and vegetables, brought them down really low. And it actually worked; people really did buy more of them.
But that's not sustainable. You can't do that forever. So the thought is to just raise the price of the unhealthy foods. But then how do you do that? Do you tax them? That would be incredibly unpopular. Do you do it in sort of a fake way? For example, a cafeteria at a school or at a workplace to say, you know what, we care about the health of the people who work here, so we're going to raise the price of the potato chips, so you go into work and you can have a $3 bag of potato chips or you can have a 25 cent apple. And they hope that that would work.
MCEDWARDS: Food for thought.
COHEN: There you go.
MCEDWARDS: Thanks, Elizabeth Cohen -- appreciate it.
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