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One million UK children have now taken part in Tesco’s Eat Happy project to improve their food skills and knowledge. 

The milestone comes 18 months into the launch of the project, which it developed after revealing research showing that 80% of today’s children were less healthy than their parents. 

The Tesco project takes children out of the classroom and shows them where their food comes from, with 4 to 11-year-olds having visited suppliers at their farms or factories and gone on in-store “Farm to Fork trails” at 787 Tesco stores UK-wide.

Practical demonstrations have taught children about fresh fruit and vegetables, cheeses, bread and the different species of fish. 

Tesco has also conducted online field trips for more than 18,000 pupils, including talks from banana growers in Costa Rica and to pasta makers in Naples.

“We want to do everything we can to serve our customers a little better every day, and this is an important part of that,” said Tesco group communications director Rebecca Shelley, 

Theoriginal study, undertaken by global consumer trends experts Future Foundation, also revealed that even though 90% of children said they knew which foods were healthy, less than 10% achieved their 5 a day target.

More than half (52%) believed potatoes counted towards the total and one in 10 counted carrot cake. The study also found that two-thirds of parents believed children ate much more convenience food than they did as a child, and half said they feared the impact of their children’s diet on long-term health.