08/27/07 Stressing Fruit & Veggies

Stressing Fruit and Veggies. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. When you think of healthy cultures for some reason I always think of the Asian countries as being more apt to eat healthy. But in today's society, that is not necessarily the case. Rebecca Baerveldt is the Export Manger for the Washington Apple Commission; she says pressure is a major culprit. BAERVELDT: We are focusing on children with a lot our health message because although their parents are the ones and particularly their mothers are the ones that are buying it; the children have a lot of pester power and ability to influence their mothers buying decisions. The Commission has been working in Asian markets to increase the consumption of fresh fruit. BAERVELDT: We do work a lot with schools. For example in Thailand we've been doing some school visits where we bring in a mascot and do a presentation on healthy eating which of course includes eating an apple a day. We're also involved in Taiwan on a fairly extensive program  it's modeled on the U.S. Five A Day program. Baerveldt says there were some eye opening facts that came out of a study done. BAERVELDT: School lunches in Taiwan were only providing half a serving of fruit and half a serving of vegetables on average in any lunch that they served. In addition to that they were finding that up to 75% of the kids were leaving at least some part of their vegetable. Only 3% of fruit was left so that was good news for us. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.