One supermarket I've managed to speak to about all this confirmed that they do indeed use a Brixometer in their factories to test the sugars, acids and texture of their products before they pack them up and send them off to their shops, but they don't test them for nutritional quality unless they've got something they want to challenge with the supplier, but they don't do that routinely. But it's a tool that's used by several supermarkets, if not all of them, and I haven't managed to get to all of them yet, but I will.

Now, the name comes from the work of a German chemist, Professor Brix, in the nineteenth century, who was apparently the first person to measure the density of plant juices, and this inspired the development of a Brixometer in the 1970s to enable growers to study how the nutritional density of a plant varies depending on the quality of the soil and the way the plant is cultivated. Brix tables enable growers to score the success or otherwise of their venture and adjust their practices or location accordingly. Now, this is something that all gardeners worry about, but you can imagine that viticulturists, who are involved in multimillion pound businesses, are very keen to use this method to enable them to distinguish between plonk and the vintage wine that will win them high-class awards. There's no doubt that the grape is the product that is demonstrating that the nutrient density of grapes is much higher than every other produce that was tested.

So, what were the results in Cardiff? Apples, carrots, lettuces, potatoes and tomatoes were tested from all five outlets, and results were assessed for each vegetable or fruit by ranking the highest average Brix score to give them a first, second, third, fourth and fifth. Now, these placements were then totalled to give an overall value. Perhaps you won't be surprised that the organic grower who'd picked his own produce had the highest overall score, but that was followed by the street stall that had bought all their produce that morning from the Cardiff wholesale market in Bessemer Road. The highest scoring apples were from a supermarket, so there's a good deal of complexity in this. But one point to just mention in passing is that the Brix tables for none of these products scored 'excellent'. Only two items were good, and both of them from the organic provider. That's because the health of our soil is in a terrible state, but that is a debate for another day.

I want to turn now to how nutrient density might inform public procurement of food and what that could do for the health of our nation. First of all, school meals. The 'Feeding our Future' report by Peas Please, which came out earlier this year, highlights how little veg is being consumed in schools, even in normal times. We're not the worst in the UK, but neither are we the best, and their Eat your Greens survey revealed that over a quarter of pupils ate no vegetables at all when they ate lunch in school, and when asked why, the answers varied from 'overcooked' to 'poor quality' to 'not appealing.' I think, in general terms, they're talking about how they don't like the taste. Their report calls for a new focus on procurement standards as well as investment in catering skills. Taste, it seems to me, is crucial, because children understand that. Blind tasting of everyday foods with pupils demonstrates that the ones they tend to like best were the ones that score highest on the Brix tables, because they taste better. That is what the nutrient content, the minerals and the vitamins tell you.

Indeed, if hospital catering standards also paid attention to the nutrient density of the food they serve, where their patients are mainly frail and elderly and don't want to eat much of anything, and if what they did eat was more nourishing, maybe that would accelerate their recovery and get them out of hospital more quickly. Speaking to the nutritionist and head of catering for Cardiff and Vale health board, they emphasised that, of course, where possible, they will want to locally source sustainable fruit and vegetables, and that's in the all-Wales contract for fruit and vegetables for hospital services. And quality forms a large part of their general requirement for a product, and they do ask for examples of the products they're buying. They now source all their fresh fruit and vegetables from a company that is based at Bessemer Road market, which you may recall was the one that scored second highest. So, that is very good news. But, of course, the produce they sell is not necessarily UK grown, and it's very difficult to track exactly when it was picked and how much deterioration in the food there had been since that had occurred.

The food standards for hospitals do indeed give nutrient specifications for hospital menus, as you'd expect, and all hospitals in Wales are mandated to comply with them. But, because of the nature of hospital patients being generally unwell and nutritionally compromised, more emphasis tends to be placed on the protein and the calorie intake, as well as encouraging people to eat by providing menu items that are aesthetically pleasing or ones that they're used to. I was very interested to hear that nutritionists have submitted new hospital catering guidelines for the future, which they submitted to the chief nurse, and it's been two years since they've heard whether these draft revised standards are going to be approved. And, of course, it requires ministerial approval, I'd imagine, because there will be costs involved.

I want to finish with an anecdote of a recent visit I did to a dementia care centre, where there was a completely brilliant chef, very highly qualified—he had previously taught in a catering college. And the fresh food that he was producing was hugely appreciated by these people with dementia, because taste is one of the senses that we lose last when we start to lose our senses when we grow old. And we know that eating well helps you to stay physically and mentally well, and that is why we have the healthy eating guidelines in our public places and in our public procurement.

And so, to sum up, I hope the Welsh Government will look at the nutrient density of veg and fruit that is bought for our schools, hospitals and care homes to ensure that we really are maximising the health of our nation and particularly the ones we are responsible for, and that this will provoke a much wider debate amongst the general public about what they need to be looking for when they are shopping, because there is going to be a handheld device that will enable shoppers to actually measure the nutrient density of anything that they think they might buy, which is being developed in the United States. So, this is something that is going to play an increasing role in the discourse about how we stay healthy with the food we eat. Thank you.