Providers:

National WellChild/Tamariki Ora Week 2005

Theme: colourful eating – to encourage consumption of five servings of vegetables and fruit each day.

Background

The Children’s Nutrition SurveyUP¹UP showed that over half of New Zealand children eat less than the recommended two servings of fruit and one third eat less than the recommended three servings of vegetables each day.

In New Zealand the number of deaths attributed to not eating enough vegetables and fruit is 1559 per year.²

Why colourful?

Vegetables and fruit are high in vitamins, antioxidants and hundreds of health protecting compounds, which are called phytochemicals. Colourful vegetables and fruit (i.e. green, red, orange, yellow and purple) have the highest content of these protective substances.

Benefits

• Vegetables and fruit help reduce the risk of some major lifestyles diseases e.g. cancer and heart disease.

• If children get used to eating vegetables and fruit when they are young, they will be more likely to carry this eating habit through to adulthood.

• Vegetables and fruit may displace energy dense (high fat/sugar foods) in children’s diets and so help prevent the development of overweight and obesity.

• Vegetables and fruit are high in vitamin C, which helps with the absorption of iron from plant based foods.

• Beta-carotene the orange/red pigment in vegetables and fruit can be converted by the body into vitamin A. Some New Zealand children have lower levels of vitamin A.
  

Key Vegetable and fruit messages

• Aim for five servings* each day.
• Go for a range of colours – red, orange, green, yellow, purple.
• Fresh, frozen and canned are all good choices.

¹ PT Ministry of Health. NZ Food NZ Children: Key results of the 2002 National Children’s Nutrition Survey. Wellington; Ministry of Health: 2003.

²Ministry of Health and the University of Auckland. Nutrition and the Burden of Disease: New Zealand 1997-2011. Wellington; Ministry of Health: 2003.