TWO headlines this week will have left parents in despair. First was a claim by the Soil Association that 25 per cent more pesticides were found in samples of school fruit compared with fruit bought from shops; second was news from Canadian researchers who found that children who drink bottled water rather than fluoridated tap water may be missing out on tooth protection.

It’s not fair, is it? There you are thinking that you are doing the right thing and someone tells you that you’ve got it wrong, yet again. Why is it, for example, that your children are toting a bottle of water in their lunch boxes? Because you thought getting them to drink water would be better for them than sending them in with cartons of tooth-rotting squash. Similarly with the schools fruit programme. You thought five a day was good and now someone is telling you that school fruit is full of pesticides.

Neither of these headlines gives the whole picture. Children today have better dental health than their parents and most are likely to reach adulthood without a single cavity. Most will also keep their teeth to old age, unlike their grandparents. This spectacular improvement is due to fluoride which, in those parts of the country that do not have fluoride either added to the water or present naturally, comes mainly from toothpaste. N ot so long ago there was a scare that children were having too much fluoride from toothpaste, hence the recommendation that under-sixes use only a pea- sized amount on their brush.

Is water better than squash or cola? You bet. And providing it in a form that’s accessible and pleasant (unlike the school drinking fountain) is entirely sensible.

As for fruit and veg, it’s taken us the best part of a decade to get people to understand that five portions a day is the way to go. How little acquaintance children have with green stuff was shown on Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners programme. Several children didn’t know what an onion looked like.

All but two of the pesticide residues identified in the Soil Association report were below government maximum residue levels, which are set with a wide safety margin and also assume that a substance is consumed at breakfast, lunch, tea and supper, every day, which is clearly not the case in real life. Thus a “maximum” residue is very tiny.

The benefits of eating fruit and vegetables far outweigh any possible harm from pesticides, which at these levels has yet to be proved.

So ignore the headlines, and if you can get fruit, veg and water, of any type, into your child, take three house points, a gold star and go to the top of the class immediately.

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