Parents think potato chips are vegetables

The study found that a large number of parents in Britain are unaware of basic nutrition
LONDON: Kids prefer to gorge on potato chips, but it is their parents who are to be blamed for their obesity, for a new survey has found that most modern moms and dads consider the popular junk food to be a healthy vegetable.
According to the survey, a large number of parents in Britain are still unaware of basic nutrition -- in fact, half of them don’t realise that greens cooked as part of meal count as a portion of vegetable.
Instead more than a third of the 1,000 sets of parents polled, said they believed that a baked potato is counted as a portion of vegetables. What’s surprising is that another five per cent identified chips as a vegetable.
Almost eight out of ten respondents said that they did not think that frozen fruit and vegetables counted towards the recommendations of five portions a day. One in three said that their children knew more about nutrition than they did.
According to Azmina Govindji of the British Dietetic Association, there’s strong evidence that eating enough fruit and vegetables could reduce the risk of contracting certain diseases, including cancer.
“There is a lot of research which shows that eating 400 grams, or five portions, of fruit and vegetables every day can reduce your risk of certain types of cancer and coronary heart disease.“More widely, eating lots of fruit and vegetables is linked to a lower risk of being obese, which can accuse many problems, not least diseases like diabetes,” Govindji was quoted by ‘The Daily Telegraph’ as saying.
She added although many people considered potatoes to be a vegetable, they didn’t contain as many nutrients as other vegetables and were more correctly associated with starches such as rice and pasta.
The survey, carried out for the Department of Health in Britain, also revealed that eight out of ten parents under the age of 34 struggled with the cost of buying fresh fruit and vegetables.