"Told to Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries"

at 12:48 PM

The baby-carrot industry has been busy; it has started a $25 million advertising campaign to trick people into treating baby carrots like junk food, ie. eating them all the time.  But despite two decades of public health campaigns and initiatives, record growth of farmers' markets around the country and easier use of products such as pre-washed spinach, Americans are still not eating their vegetables.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, this month released a nation-wide study of fruits and vegetable consumption.  Only 26% of Americans eat vegetables several times a day.  It is, in fact, less than half of what health officials had hoped and has not increased at all since 2000.

Only 5% of customers at restaurants order salad as their main course.  I was talking to a couple of people one morning in my spin class, and the shock on their faces was unmistakable when I declared that I always order salads and vegetables as my main course.  I thought maybe I had said that I eat live crickets for dinner (which is actually on the rise in this country).

There are several problems behind this trend.  Here are a few and see if you can add to this list:

1. Vegetables in the wrong hands can taste horrible (can you cook okra, so it is not slimy?- hint, put it in water and lemon juice for a while before cooking...)

2. Most people are intimidated by vegetables, and don't know which ones to cook and which taste better raw.

3. Most people don't know or don't want to believe that you can actually get full with lots of vegetables on your plate with some protein on top (either eggs or chicken or beef).

4. Vegetables are not yet affordable for all people.

5.  I think the most important one is this: most people don't know that vegetables can be convenient to prepare and eat.

As one expert from a marketing firm said and was quoted in the New York Times: Eating vegetables is a lot less fun than eating flavor-blasted Doritos".  This is what we have to fight.  And we have to realize that the flavor we taste from the Doritos is putting pounds on our hips...