This is the question I have been asked most often over the past two weeks and a very fair question it is too.

My background is in marked contrast to the immediate past Master and the upper warden. I would like to pay tribute to last year’s Master, the company’s first lady Master, Jane Anderson. Jane is a third-generation Master, whose loyalty and dedication to the company shone though in all that she did during her year in office. Our upper warden Peter Cooper has fruit marketing and the City running through his veins. He has known a lifetime in the fruit trade, and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the company and its history. I shall need their help and guidance throughout the year.

Over the past 200 years there have been just three Masters of the Fruiterers who were doctors, yet the health-giving properties of fruit have been known for centuries. The saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” was coined by Benjamin Franklin in the early 18th century. Scientific evidence now supports Franklin’s contention, and a diet rich in fruit and vegetables helps to reduce risks of cancer and heart disease.

Paediatricians in Mediterranean Europe, where children have a diet rich in fruit, vegetables and fish, have always maintained that the asthma they see is less severe than in northern European countries. Only in the past few weeks a large international study has shown that children with asthma who eat fruit regularly are less likely for it to be severe, whereas the opposite applies to those who eat a lot of junk food. Unfortunately British children eat less fruit and vegetables than children in almost any other European country and the diet a child adopts is likely to be the diet they follow as adults.

For three years the Fruiterers provided a grant to Food Dudes, the only programme that has been shown to improve the diet of children. There are now over half a million schoolchildren participating in this programme. This year New Spitalfields Market is looking to develop a healthy eating initiative and we hope to work with them.

If such programmes are successful then the demand for fruit and vegetables will increase and at the heart of our company is a duty to encourage young people to enter the fruit industry and fund research to meet new challenges in the production of fruit.

The company is a rich source of knowledge. Our Awards Council brings together that talent and experience to choose what we should fund and, when the need exceeds our resources, see how best we can use our influence with funding bodies richer than ourselves.

Apprenticeships have been in the news lately with the publication of the Richard Review, which looks towards the future of apprenticeship schemes. This year we shall be supporting a new fruit-related apprentice based at Hadlow College.

Trees are the theme for the City of London Festival this year and we are providing fruit trees and educational material explaining the growth and production.

My wife Valerie, who is also a doctor, and I were guests at the FPC dinner and it was inspiring to see the trade’s enthusiasm and energy. —