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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Free Fruit for School Children to Improve Food Quality

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A diet high in fruits and vegetables (FV) is inversely related to several chronic diseases [1], and an increased intake would improve diet quality and global public health [2]. In Norway, children and adolescents consume only about half of the national five-a-day recommendation [3]. As food preferences and habits established in childhood to a large extent tend to be maintained into adulthood [4, 5], and in order to achieve maximum prevention potential, it is important to get children to eat more FV. It is also important that effective efforts conducted to increase children’s FV intake result in sustained elevated FV intakes, preferably throughout life, in order to have maximum health prevention potential. However, only a few school-based intervention studies evaluate follow-ups longer than 1 year after the end of the intervention [6]. In addition, eating more FV could mean eating less of something else, and the effect on diet quality of eating more FV will be even more apparent if the increased FV consumption additionally leads to a lower intake of unhealthy snacks high in salt, sugar and fats [7]. Only a few studies have explored whether interventions aimed to increase intake of FV, also decrease consumption of unhealthy snacks.