Eat yer greens

I was amused by the juxtaposition of a soul-searching article about Scots’ children’s aversion to fruit and vegetables (23 September) and a report on the queues for Krispy Kreme doughnuts at their new outlet in Aberdeen.

Says it all, doesn’t it? I never heard of Scots queuing outside a greengrocer’s two hours before it opened.

The point is that doughnuts, pastries, cakes and sweeties offer instant gratification, and are therefore hard to resist.

Generations of Scots have been put off vegetables by our practice of boiling them down to a tasteless mush, and as for fruit, the supermarket oranges I buy almost need a pneumatic drill to get the peel off, while “ripen in the fruit bowl” nectarines can still be rock-hard a week after purchase.

It’s different, of course, in the exotic climes visited by Rick Stein in his latest TV series, where both climate and culinary know-how combine to make fruit and vegetables as delectable as the sweet stodge we Scots love.

Harry D Watson

Edinburgh