New data claims to show that the vast majority of children in England are not only shunning cigarettes and alcohol, but are also obediently eating their fruit and vegetables.
While only a small minority of under-16s surveyed in 2014 tried an alcoholic drink or a cigarette, almost a quarter now eat the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, according to the Health Survey for England, published this month by Britain’s leading independent social research institute.
This compares with just 11 per cent in 2003, and over the same period, the average number of portions eaten by children in England has risen from 2.5 to 3.5 per day, according to the survey.
Meanwhile, in 2014 only five per cent of 8-15-year-olds said they had ever tried a cigarette, compared with 19 per cent in 2003, the survey of more than 2,000 children in England showed. Over the same period the number who had ever tried an alcoholic drink fell from almost half (45 per cent) to just 17 per cent.
Stricter attitudes towards drinking and smoking among parents, public health drives, and a clampdown on under-age sales by newsagents and off-licences are believed to be behind the decline of youngsters indulging in cigarettes and alcohol, with the products being icreasingly seen as socially unacceptable among younger teenagers, making peer pressure less of a factor than it once was.
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