The five-a-day program, designed by the National Cancer Institute to encourage people to eat five fruits and vegetables a day, is so far removed from the reality of what most children eat that its creators may need to go back to the drawing board and produce something more realistic. That's the only conclusion that can be drawn from reading a week's worth of dietary diary records that were kept by 87 students in three schools on Long Island and one in Brooklyn.
On average, each child ate 4.7 servings of fruits and vegetables a week - french fries not included - or just about half a serving a day. These figures give every entry the benefit of the doubt.When peas or broccoli or tomatoes are listed, there is no way of knowing whether the amount consumed was half a cup or two peas, a broccoli florette or a tomato wedge.
When there is an entry for fruit juice, there is no clue as to whether it is real fruit juice or a fruit drink with a little fruit and a lot of sweetener.
And even if the servings of french fries were included, the number of servings of fruits and vegetables would still not reach five a day, or even close.
Of the 87 students, 17 ate no fruits or vegetables except french fries. Some ate none at all; 9 ate a serving a week, and 39 ate 5 or fewer servings a week. The rest ate more than 5 but fewer than 16. Only one student came within striking distance of the 5-a-day ideal, consuming a little over 3 fruits and vegetables each day; 2 others ate as much as 21/2 servings a day.
In addition, much of what these children ate in the fruit and vegetable department was from fruit juice, which lacks one of the key components for fruits and vegetables, fiber. Most of them ate virtually nothing that contains fiber.
Because the children are not eating nondairy foods that containcalcium, they could compensate by eating dairy products. But they aren't doing that, either.
The beverages of choice are soft drinks, some coffee and tea. What cheese they eat is generally found on top of a pizza.
Perhaps it is not surprising that the child who came closest to eating enough fruits and vegetables also consumed 13 glasses of milk during the week.
This depressing, but predictable information comes from work done by Janet Bode, the author of "Food Fight: A Guide to Eating Disorders for Pre-Teens and Their Parents" (Simon & Schuster, $16). Bode offered the children - who were 11 to 13 and in sixth, seventh and eighth grades - complete anonymity, so she believes that most of them filled out their diaries truthfully.
The four schools, all public schools, were South Ocean Middle School and Saxton Middle School, both in Patchogue, N.Y.; Oregon Middle School in Medford, Ore., and Marine Park School, Intermediate School 278, in Brooklyn.
The numbers of those who ate fast food for dinner may come as no shock to someone familiar with the diet of preteenagers, or any other children.
Nor, perhaps, would there be cause for surprise in how many of the students skipped meals or drank soda, chewed gum or ate candy in place of a meal.
The children, Bode said, were not ignorant about fat, calories or cholesterol. They were, she noted, "quite sophisticated" about them. And despite the vast quantities of junk food they eat, they feel guilty about doing so.
They get their information not from nutritionists and not at school, but from their parents and from television talk shows. What they learn from their parents, of course, depends on where their parents get their information.
What they get from talk shows is worrisome, because talk shows don't bother with boring but fundamental facts about nutrition. They prefer the sensational: crash diets, low carbohydrate diets, the cabbage soup diet, diets aided by dietary supplements that purport to "burn off fat."
And of course, the children are exposed every day through television, magazines and billboards to today's female ideal, the anorexic.
Bode's book is directed at those who may be on the way to anorexia or bulimia, and it offers both the children and their parents suggestions for combating the problem. But it is clear from the dietary diaries that some of these preteenagers are hurtling toward obesity.
When they are not dieting by eating nothing at all or drinking a glass of water, their food choices are loaded with fat.