Parents know that if you slap a cartoon character on a box of choco-doughnutgolden-honey-Os, or any brand of breakfast sugar “with added vitamins”, children will pester for that particular box of sweeties disguised as cereal.

Some well-meaning creatives have now turned the idea on its head, using cartoon characters to promote fruit and vegetables. There is, after all, a precedent — US spinach growers said that Popeye’s antics increased sales by 33 per cent (although who’s to say that children actually ate the stuff?)

Now another weird-looking dude, SpongeBob SquarePants, is cropping up on packets of spinach and carrots in America. Mr SquarePants also spearheaded a “Get Up and Play” campaign in the States, presumably to get children to frolic outdoors instead of slumping on the sofa watching cartoons.

America is also home of the VeggieTales — animated veggies touting a wholesome Christian message. But would British children be swayed by Deuteronomy-spouting broccoli?

We will soon find out. Cartoon Network UK is screening Elfy Foods, a show about mighty elves who get their superpowers from munching on rebranded vegetables. Carrots, for example, are called llumo gooms, which give night vision. Turbo tips (broccoli) give brain power. Fung fus (mushrooms) give “boingability”, whatever that is. But the Minister of Elficulture, Frank Farter, has rejected the elf way of life and razes the crops to leave the elves weak through lack of Elfy food . . . and so on.

Over on BabyTV, a channel targeted at the under-threes, there is a psychedelic cartoon in which vegetables shuffle together to form the arms, legs and heads of animals with baby sweetcorn legs, squash heads, etc. I’m sure it tickles babies pink, but to my parental mind it looks like a bad acid trip. That said, the creators of Elfy Foods and the moving vegetable stories certainly have their hearts in the right place. It is right and worthy to try to give fruit and veg good press, but whether it will put sprouts in mouths is unknown. Paul Sacher, a dietitian at Great Ormond Street Hospital, who advised on the content of Elfy Foods, says: “Cartoons are a way to fire up the imagination. Even when parents do the right thing and serve fruit and vegetables at meals, children might reject them because their schoolmates say these foods aren’t cool.”

But most children I know are not bothered whether a food is cool or not. They just spurn whatever doesn’t taste nice to them.

As a family we are eager to see the Veggie-Tales Lord of the Beans DVD, though, which is the story of an asparagus called Toto Baggypants who inherits a magic bean and learns about the gifts that God has given us, but meets an Elvis impersonator called Larry the Cucumber on the way, as you do. More magic mushrooms, anyone?

MICHELE KIRSCH

Breaking the Thais of poverty

George Galloway’s toe-curling exploits should prove that politics and reality TV just don’t mix. But nobody has yet told Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand’s billionaire Prime Minister, who this month starred in a Big Brother-style production of his own called Backstage Show. The live, five-day broadcast was designed to display Thaksin’s dynamic “CEO-style ” approach to tackling poverty.

Critics suggest that the show had little to do with making poverty history, and rather a lot with boosting Thaksin’s waning popularity. His love of the limelight makes Galloway look positively photophobic. Two years ago Thaksin fulfilled a boyhood dream by taking a 45-minute flight in a Royal Thai Airforce F16. This so entranced the masses that few bothered to question whether it was a wise deployment of airforce resources.

The stunt also sent a message to opponents: catch me if you can. Those opponents have pounced on the show — which was far from warts and all. It was staged in an impoverished district where villages appeared to have been swept and repainted. Farmers were commanded to tether buffalo so that dung did not spoil the view.

At least, however, Thaksin did rough it: he slept in a tent. (A very large tent, guarded by police officers.) Thaksin dropped in on pre-scrubbed poor people. “Try figuring out on your own how to eradicate poverty,” he is reputed to have told one family. He handed out £3,000 (200,000 baht) of his own cash, a small fortune by local standards. The Thai media quickly dubbed him “Santa Claus ”.

And Thaksin did provide enlivening gaffes. He rode a motorbike without a helmet — in a country where, by one estimate, 36 people perish on the roads every day. On Wednesday, Thaksin and co were shown watching a report of a fatal air crash during a cabinet meeting. Despite the application of rejuvenating face cream — which cameras caught him applying — Thaksin was looking decidedly weary by Friday. At least one opinion poll said that the public adored the show, and there is talk of it being repeated in other provinces.

Its timing distracted attention from negotiations for what Thai newspapers call “the deal of the century”: the sell-off of Thaksin’s telecommunications company Shin Corp. The deal netted the Thaksin family and their business associates $2 billion (£1.12 billion). That’s poverty eradicated for Thaksin, then.

ANDREW MARSHALL