More veg, please! Wacky "greens" on their way

EATING your greens will make your hair go curly, help you see in the dark and leave a delicious taste in your mouth.

Try telling the first two to your children and they'll be less than impressed.

But these days they might believe the third.

Because vegetables are as now big as pizza in the teeny taste stakes and scores of children just can't get enough.

And given that for generations it has been traditional for anyone in a school uniform to have an aversion to greens, this is nothing short of astonishing.

For the first time, parents are seeing the offspring showing the same enthusiasm for vegetables as they do for a Big Mac. This turn-around in children's eating habits has been brought about by frozen food chain Iceland, which has created a Wacky Veg range to encourage children to eat more greens. It features pizza-flavoured cauliflower, chocolate carrots, baked bean peas and cheese and onion cauliflower. The creations are in response to a plea from Professor Gordon McVie, director general of the Cancer Research Campaign, who said: "There is a clear link between a diet high in vegetables and cancer prevention, yet recent research showed that mums were losing the battle to get their kids to eat them.

"Flavoured veg might initially seem like an odd idea but chocolate-flavoured cereals have already been accepted."

But can youngsters actually tell the fake flavours from the real thing? Three pupils from St Bartholomew's Primary School, Blackburn - Hayley Slater, 10, Gemma Baldwin, 11, and Byhrom Asgharyzadegan, 10, were blindfolded and tasted the wacky veg against cheese and tomato pizza, Heinz baked beans, Cadbury's chocolate and cheese and onion crisps - and the results were amazing.

Byhrom, of Hamilton Street, Blackburn, scoffed the sweetcorn and peas believing them to be pizza and baked beans.

"They are yummy," said Byhrom, shovelling in the kind of vegetables his mum has spent years trying to get him to eat.

But he was not fooled by the carrots and cauliflower.

Gemma, of Brownhill Drive, Blackburn, and Hayley, of New Wellington Close, Blackburn, were not tricked by the masking flavours of three of the vegetables but were fooled by the baked bean-flavoured peas.

But knowing they were not the real thing didn't stop the youngsters' enjoying the vegetables.

Byhrom and Gemma loved all but the carrots and Hayley, already a vegetable fan, said she wanted to swap to the wacky variety. However, Asda's produce director Andy Clarke criticised the wacky veg.

He said: "They reinforce the perception that vegetables taste so awful that their true flavour has to be disguised. This could make it even harder to encourage adults, brought up on artificially-flavoured veg, to transfer to the real thing."

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