7 Feb 2014

Fruit in Schools programme resumes

6:32 am on 7 February 2014

The Fruit in Schools programme resumes for the 2014 year next week.

Half a million pieces of mainly New Zealand-grown fruit and vegetables will be delivered each week to mostly Decile One and Two schools and the co-ordinator, Paula Dudley, says extensive surveying of how the programme is going is yielding very positive results.

She says the programme gets feedback each term by contacting schools, emailing them, and doing telephone surveys.

Ms Dudley says there's information that the children are becoming healthier with some schools reporting the eradication of school sores as a result of the extra vitamin C, dental health also appears to be improving.

She says the children are also now accepting of fresh fruit and vegetables and tend to choose them, as well as asking for them at home as well.