On Five a Day

On Five a Day

Here's a tip.

When your local Budgens supermarket realises that it has hopelessly overstocked on fresh green vegetables and marked it all down to 20p, don't - whatever you do - buy all the spinach in the world and eat it all in two rampant, steamy sessions thinking that you are doing yourself a power of good.

That's as maybe. You need your five-a-day, after all.

However - and I take this as a scandal of global proportions - colonic apocalypse lurks just around the corner.

For what they don't tell you is that you'll still be doing green poo a week later. That's something they never mentioned on the Popeye cartoons:

"I'm Popeye the sailor man
I live in a caravan
I only eat spinach a bit
Because it gives me green shit
I'm Popeye the sailor man!"

There are - disgustingly - no warnings on the packet. And by rights, there should be, with the same prominence as the cautions they print on cigarette packets.

"DANGER: Makes your turds go green."

And beetroot as well:

"WARNING: Makes your piss go purple."

Not to mention Extra Strong Mints:

"CAUTION: Makes your wee sting like you're passing broken glass"

I wrote to my MP, the schools minister Jim Knight on this subject which has - thanks to Jamie 'Fat Tongue' Oliver's meddling in school meals - implications for the millions of young people in this country.

Scandalously, I have yet to receive a reply.

I am not mad.