Fruit Fiasco 1

Mike Denham Burning Our Money

Hey kids! Here’s a cool way to waste £119m!

Nanny’s simple-minded attempt to get school children eating more fresh fruit and veg has been a total flop.

The idea was that school kids only eat crisps and sweeties because they aren’t given the alternative of fresh fruit and veg. Give them that alternative free, and hey presto, the problem’s solved.

So the government set up yet another top-down programme, with loads of money but very little idea how it would actually work in practice.

As it happens, there is an internationally recognised project working in this field, and it’s based at Bangor Uni. Called Food Dudes (pic above), it seeks to find practical ways of persuading kids to eat more healthily.

Yes, I know. Food Dudes. How excruciatingly toe curling. But having scanned their website, they do seem to have practical ideas.

Naturally the Department of Health pretty well ignored their recommendations. Instead,despite virtually no evidence a simple hand-out scheme would work- and many good reasons to think it wouldn’t- they went ahead with a £119m top-down programme.

Sure enough, it’s been a complete failure. One of the Bangor Profs says:

"We could see it was making no difference whatever. There was a decline in uptake overall if anything.

It is extraordinary that many millions of pounds of government money can be spent on schemes without getting a shred of evidence."

Prof, we’ve got news for you- Big Government does that all the time. Indeed, regular BOM readers will recall the £1bn wasted on the similar, and equally shambolic, Childhood Obesity programme (still continuing despite abject failure).

Nanny rarely knows best.

Except of course, when it comes to wasting our money.

Mike Denham

Mike is a former Treasury economist who worked extensively on public spending and fiscal analysis during the 1970s and early 1980s. His work included cost benefit appraisal of public projects, analysis of public sector cost inflation and value for money studies.

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This is just another way to get parents to stuff their kids full of junk by giving them proof their kids aren’t interested in healthy food. Its ridiculous. 60% of both my kids lunches consist of fresh fruit and and veg, plus they both are pleased to have fruit offered at school (as am I). They love it, they are active playful kids and they have never even wanted to eat sweets all day – in fact they often refuse chocolate for fruit. But then again I am very strict with them when it comes to TV. They don’t watch adverts full stop – so perhaps that has had an effect.