Fruits and Veggies - Are we selling hard enough?

Here is a link to a story by Meredith Cohn from The Baltimore Sun that I linked to in "TK Headlines" today. The article is headlined "Fruits, veggies a hard sell." We've seen this kind of story before, with the gist being "Mom said to eat your veggies, and we still aren't following her advice, decades later."

Cohn writes:

Yet, years after a concerted effort to boost consumption of healthful foods, Americans eat the same paltry amounts that they did in 1985, when the government first recommended two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables daily.

But the story does look head on at uncomfortable truths, the soul-baring confessions of consumers who are semi guilt-ridden about food choices. Consider this excerpt:

"I try and go for the apple or pear, but believe me, I'd rather have the cookie," said Brentt Naylor, a 33-year-old Baltimore resident who not only shops at the hyper-health-conscious Whole Foods, but belongs to a community program that allows him a weekly bounty of locally grown produce. "You really have to set aside time to make vegetables tasty. It's taste and time."

Here is another....

And then there was Bryan Rupert, a 20-year-old ordering a pizza for dinner recently from a South Baltimore shop. He said he wouldn't know what to do with vegetables if he bought them, which he doesn't.

TK: Fruits and Veggies - More Matters campaign gets some ink in the story, as does the USDA fruit and vegetable program and pilot projects seeking to increase food stamp purchases of fruits and vegetables. Given the challenges of getting consumers to change, I wonder if it is time to aggressively promote a vegetarian message to baby boomer women. While most Americans won't go vegetarian, the very fact that the concept is promoted would raise the profile of fruits and veggies and create a buzz about an edgy marketing tack.