The federal government will spend more than $1 billion this year on some healthy snacks and nutrition education - videos of dancing fruit and hundreds of hours of lively lessons about how great you will feel if you eat well.

But an Associated Press review of scientific studies examining 57 such programs found mostly failure. Just four showed any real success against the growing epidemic of childhood obesity.

…Last year a major federal pilot program offering free fruits and vegetables to fifth-graders showed the children became less willing to eat them than they had been at the start. Apparently they didn’t like the taste.