Thursday, May 29, 2008

Odd...

Many moons ago, I commented in a blog post about the "five-a-day" thing for vegetables, and about how spinach contains very different nutrients from sweetcorn. Really, I did, back in 2006, in a post entitled "Something that has been bothering me for some time".

Anyway, a few weeks ago, one of the supermarkets started a series of adverts about fruit and veg, claiming that not only should you eat five-a-day, but you should also try to vary the colours of the fruit and veg.

The pseudo-science behind this is that the colour of fruit and veg is determined by the chemical composition, so choosing a wide range of colours, is a quick shorthand for eating a wide variety of nutrients.

My reaction to these adverts was, "Oh come on! Suddenly, it's not enough that we eat the mandated five, but now we have to vary the colours too?"

Then I found myself checking the history of my blog to cull any 'draft' posts, only to discover that I had made note of this need two years ago. Oops.

2 comments:

Captain Ric said...

5 a day? Where did it come from I ask you?

Picked out of thin air - that's where!

Ask a dietician (I have), most of them don't eat 5 a day. And this particular one doesn't know where the figure came from. I suspect it's a repeated pattern.

Made up, I tell's ya.

Now, eating more fruit and veg is a good thing. But these targets we keep having foisted on us are just useless and pointless. Water, wine (red), guiness, fruit juice, milk, red meat, fish, vegetables and fruit, pasta, rice ... ad nauseum.

Two words:
balanced diet.

Steph/ven said...

"Five-a-day" came about because "eat more fruit and veg" is a vague and unhelpful statement. If you want to change people's behaviour, you need to give a target number and repeat it constantly.

Hence, we have to eat five portions of fruit and veg a day, three portions of whole grains per day (apparently), drink a glass of red wine per day (but no alcohol, ever), drink 1.5 litres of water per day, and so forth.

It really is a wonderful piece of mass manipulation.