The clearly laughable call from health professionals for Britons to eat at least seven portions of fruit and veg a day is not a hilarious April Fool’s joke, it has been revealed.
The new advice, building on the optimistic ‘five a day’ guidelines which have been widely circulated and widely ignored for a number of years, comes after scientists discovered a link between good health and the consumption of things that grow in the ground and aren’t necessarily fried in sugar.
“No, we are serious”, stressed a scientist at the Centre for Research into Well-Timed Press Releases, “It has to be seven. We found that people who ate seven bits of fruit or veg in a day lived longer, and they probably had very similar lifestyles to our hard-drinking, sedentary, pizza-loving control group. It can only be the fruit and veg. So we’re rolling this advice out nationwide.
“No, I don’t think this is a strange day to release this report.”
“All you have to do is eat all of this. Every day.”
The response from the public has alternated between chortling and confusion:
Chortling – “Good joke”
Confusion – “What do you mean it isn’t a joke, it’ April Fool’s Day and this is ridiculous”
Chortling – “I average three vegetables a week, three of which are potato-based”
Confusion – “Can I even name seven?”
Chortling – “Fuck it, I’ll just drink wine instead”
Confusion – “Does wine count? Surely it does? It’s grapes no?”
Chortling – “Seven wines! Ace”
Quite how well people will respond to these new guidelines is yet to be seen, although given that roughly 100% of us get nowhere near five a day it seems unlikely that the push to seven will unleash a tidal wave of vegetable consumption in which rabid shoppers attack market stalls, gorging themselves on marrows and various legumes, the fleshy pulp dripping from their gaping maws.
It might, obviously, but it does seem unlikely.
What’s more likely is that maybe, occasionally, a very small slice of the population might allow an extra carrot to invade their dinner.
What’s even more likely, so likely in fact that it is probably already happening, is that everyone will laugh, actively pretend it was all an April Fool’s joke, and continue refusing to eat healthily until the government relent and allows crisps, chocolate and cheese to count towards the total.
Then we’ll smash seven a day.
Rant! Rave! Relax. 