Giving schoolchildren free fruit to improve their diets may not have any long-term health benefits.
A report by experts claims that once pupils are older, and no longer eligible for the free fruit in schools scheme, any boosts their bodies get from nutrients and vitamins evaporate.
The report comes as the Scottish Executive launches a £5m pilot extension to its free fruit scheme with primary one to three pupils in the Borders, East Ayrshire, Fife, Glasgow and West Dunbartonshire being given free nutritious meals during a six-month trial. Since 2004, the government in Westminster has spent £119m providing all four to six year-olds with a piece of fruit every school day. The scheme has been running in Scotland since 2003 at an estimated cost of £2m a year, setting the template which was replicated south of the border the following year.
However, according to a study published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, once pupils are older and no longer eligible for the free fruit in schools scheme the benefits could not be seen at all.
Epidemiologist Professor Janet Cade and colleagues assessed the impact of the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme on 3700 primary one and two children from 98 schools in the north of England during 2004. The results showed the scheme initially boosted fruit intake by half a portion and slightly increased levels of beta carotene and vitamin C.
However, these increases had waned seven months later and had disappeared completely by the time the children reached primary three and were no longer eligible for the scheme.
There were no changes in salt, fat or overall energy intake among the children.
Fruit and vegetable intake actually fell at home, possibly because parents thought their children were getting their quota at school.
The executive said its own research refuted Ms Cade's findings.
A spokeswoman said: "We carried out our own evaluation in 2005 and 90% of respondents now eat more fruit and vegetables than they did."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article