The Government’s recommended dose of vegetables and fruits is five helpings a day. This not only sounds disgustingly boring, but often is. But it needn’t be. The average British cook’s mind turns to cabbages, Brussels sprouts, spinach, broccoli and the ubiquitous but useless lettuce. Not dishes that are likely to persuade children to keep away from the school railings to collect food parcels. Tomatoes, dates, dried apricots, figs, bananas, broad beans, peas and carrots add a bit of colour and taste.

One of the ponds at Kew Gardens is now covered with a carpet of bright red cranberries from Massachusetts. They are waiting to be harvested and made into sauce to accompany partridge, pheasant or a turkey, following the advice of the indigenous American Indians who taught their new neighbours to serve cranberry with the game that they ate at the first Thanksgiving dinner.

Cranberry juice is not only rich in vitamin C and other antioxidants but also has antimicrobial powers that inhibit the growth of bacteria on the bladder wall by reducing their adherence to it. It also lessens the number of mouth and gut infections.

Cranberry juice to prevent bladder infections should contain at least 25 per cent cranberry and be taken every eight hours. Blueberries and pomegranate juice are just as delicious, antioxidant-rich and health giving.

Men who eat walnuts as they sip their evening drink may not know that walnuts, like Viagra, reach parts that other foods and medicines don’t. Walnuts contain the amino acid arginine and arginine, like Viagra, causes the release of nitric oxide in the arterial walls.

We are all as old as our arteries, and if arteries are to remain healthy, elastic and to continue to allow a free flow of blood then they need nitric oxide.

Walnuts are also rich in other antioxidants that offer protection to the arterial walls from the oxidation and inflammation that occurs in the arteries, especially after consuming fatty foods. This has been a bumper year for mushrooms, which have not only grown in profusion in rural fields but also in the heart of London outside Kensington Palace. Mushrooms, especially field mushrooms, not only have treat value, but they, and the cultivated mushrooms, are also loaded with nutrients, including selenium, vitamins, antioxidants and unusual enzymes.

Professor Robert Beelman, of Pennsylvania State University, said recently that a handful of white button mushrooms have 12 times more antioxidants than an equivalent amount of wheatgerm and four times more than chicken liver. Some of the more exotic mushrooms had even higher levels, and mushrooms are the best source of one powerful antioxidant, L-ergothioneine. Mushrooms also contain a couple of enzymes, 5 alpha reductase and aromatase, that have some benefits in prostatic disease — but of course these could not equal in efficacy drugs such as Casodex, or 5 alpha reductase inhibitors such as Proscar (finasteride) or Avodart (dutasteride). The good news is that, as we feel more lethargic with the oncoming of winter, it’s well known that moderate amounts of coffee are beneficial. Research at Bristol University indicates that coffee drinkers are more alert and brighter at morning lectures, and that they had a better memory and later retained more of what they learnt.

Nurses who drink coffee are less likely to become depressed or commit suicide.

Coffee also has some physical advantages: it reduces the likelihood of colorectal cancer, especially in patients with a low-fibre, fatty diet.

The American College of Emergency Physicians has drawn doctors’ attention to the disadvantages of too much caffeine taken as pills and supplements rather than a drink. The troubles are akin to the weekend headaches experienced by those whose coffee intake in the office is heavy, but have also led to hospital admissions by patients with chest pains and arrhythmias.