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Fruits, veggies still lag in diets

The consumption rate is "well below" the goal set for 2010.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 16, 2007

ATLANTA - Fewer than a third of American adults eat the amount of fruits and vegetables the government recommends, a trend that has remained steady for more than a decade, health officials said Thursday.

That is "well below" the government's goal of getting 75 percent of Americans to eat two servings of fruits and getting half to eat three servings of vegetables each day by 2010, said Dr. Larry Cohen of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The telephone survey of more than 305,000 adults in 2005 indicates that the country is only about halfway toward meeting the goal three years from now.

"We're really concerned with the lack of success in meeting these national goals," said Cohen, who works in the CDC's nutrition and physical activity division.

Although the rate of fruit and vegetable consumption has remained unchanged since 1994, health officials said the goal is still within reach.

The survey showed that 27 percent of adults ate vegetables three times a day, and about 33 percent ate fruit twice a day. A serving size is a half-cup for most fruits and vegetables, one cup for leafy greens.

Senior citizens were more likely than others to follow Mom's advice to eat more veggies, with slightly more than a third of that group eating three or more servings each day.

Younger adults, age 18 to 24, ate the fewest vegetables. Nearly four-fifths of that age category scraped the vegetables to the side of their plates - if they had vegetables on the plate at all.

Likewise, seniors also ate the most fruit, with nearly 46 percent eating two or more servings of fruit daily. People age 35 to 44 ate fruit the least, with less than 28 percent eating the recommended amount of fruit each day.

The federal agency said it doesn't know why people aren't eating more vegetables and fruits.

[Last modified March 16, 2007, 01:30:51]