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American Morning
Eating Your Veggies
Aired June 19, 2001 - 10:21 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.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Now turning to other health news: Getting children to eat enough fruits and vegetables is an ongoing concern for parents everywhere. And, so far, government education efforts are making little headway on that.
Our medical news correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Fruits and vegetables, you know, you ought to eat more of them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Have you ever heard of Produce Man? We didn't think so.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Eating five servings a day is a great way to stay healthy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GROUP (singing): Fruits and vegetables are the happening flavor!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE AS CHUCK E. CHEESE: I stand for fun!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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 Game Boy 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)
COHEN: Now, it's interesting. We've heard some people say some other reasons for the relative unpopularity of fruits and vegetables. They say they're just not as convenient as, say, a bag of chips or they're a whole lot messier than just opening up a bag of chips.
Some people also say that there some taste problems, that you can buy a peach at a store one day, it's delicious. You go back to the same store a week later and the peach isn't very good at all.
HARRIS: Vegetables just don't taste good period. I'm sorry. That's just me.
(CROSSTALK)
COHEN: Leon!
HARRIS: Hey, I get it at home, too. I know. I'll admit it. But hey, listen, that nutritionist in your piece was having troubles getting her own kid to eat the stuff. So how in the world are we supposed to do it?
COHEN: Exactly. Well, she said that she had a couple of tricks that she tried, with varying degrees of success. She said that sometimes she would cut things up into little pieces. So rather than handing her son an apple, she'd cut it up into little wedges. And sometimes he found that a little bit easier.
She also said that she carried a knife around with her at all times, so that, for example, if they were traveling, rather than just hand him some crackers, she could get an orange, for example, and try to cut it up or get an apple and try to cut it up. So carry knife at all times.
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: That's smart. You could make him eat anything with that, no doubt.
COHEN: That's right.
HARRIS: Well, actually, I like the girl who was in there. She was smart, the ides of bribing kids sometimes first. But let me ask you about that, another angle on the money thing.
You know, you also heard this idea being floated about raising prices of other foods so to make it more enticing. Do they really think that would work?
COHEN: Well, they do think it might work because they've actually done studies where they went into, let's say, a workplace cafeteria and lowered the prices of the produce. And it worked. People actually ate the produce more. But you can't do that forever. I mean, this was a program that was subsidized. And you can't just keep on doing that.
But the thought is, if you raise the price of the unhealthy foods that that might work. For example, you go down to the CNN cafeteria, you can either have a $3 bag of chips or a 25 cent apple. That might influence your decision. But there's not really a clear way to do that. Do you tax them? That would be extremely unpopular. Do you -- the food companies would obviously not like it if you started raising the prices on their products. So there's not a clear mechanism here.
HARRIS: No, the answer is just to make peas take like grapes.
COHEN: There you go.
HARRIS: That's the answer. Once they do that, it's over with.
COHEN: That would work.
HARRIS: Thank you very much, little miss answer girl. I appreciate it.
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