IT'S nice to have ideals in life, but shouldn't they be attainable?

Those modern-day prophets, the health and nutrition experts, reckon that getting five portions of fruit and vegetables under your belt should be as easy as pie.

But take an honest look around you, my brothers and sisters, and the Eiger-like scale of the challenge must start to sink in.

Take our office, for example. It doesn't take the Spanish Inquisition to uncover the good intentions that pave our individual roads to hell.

A casual examination today would lead you quickly to discover 16 bananas in various states of disrepair; a single, mouldering kiwi fruit; and a fridge full of dissolving salad.

Challenge those responsible for this blatant neglect and the place instantly takes on the air of the confessional.

Father, forgive me: the banana was green, then suddenly it turned all black and slimy. That apple got dropped and now it's got a big bruise on it; the sandwich shop beguiled me, and I did eat an egg-and-bacon butty.

There are even myths and legends associated with our failure to live the healthy life. Wherever a group of us gathers, for example, we will surely sooner or later remember that most revered of fruits, the Weeping Satsuma of Walmgate.

For many a week this legendary orange kept its lonely, faithful vigil, scorned and ignored upon the desk of its stony-hearted owner, until the day it appeared, as it were, to burst into spontaneous tears.

No statue of the Madonna in any isolated Italian village could rival the display, or so the story goes.

Some believers even maintain that the orange was finally removed by the police after the crush of adoring pilgrims became too much for the delicate traffic infrastructure of York.

For my own part, I have been trying hard to fight the good fight against free radicals and the wrong kind of cholesterol by hitting the five-a-day target.

Things usually start pretty well each day with a nice glass of pineapple juice, but I so far haven't been able to follow it up with the full-on banana porridge breakfast that my Other Half can some how put away at six o'clock in the morning.

Two cups of coffee later and I can usually tackle an apple, but it's the third portion that is the real killer.

Two clementines have to go down the hatch, but it's amazing how tricky a manoeuvre this can be when there are chocolate bars in a machine downstairs and there are cream cakes just over the road.

One of my colleagues swears by smoothies as a way to get through the fruit-and-veg pain barrier.

His recipes sound terrific, but he must have a much neater juicer than mine, which takes an age to clean and is now gathering dust next to the sandwich-maker and the blowtorch for making crme brulee.

Soup is the thing, really, and I now try to make sure I have made a huge cauldron of the stuff to stack up the brownie points and ward off the hunger pangs that otherwise threaten to lead me from the straight and narrow.

Soup has another spin-off benefit; apparently, it can also count towards the two litres of water you are meant to get through during your remorseless five-a-day quest.

That is just as well, because if I had to get through two litres of the straight stuff I'd be struggling.

Unless, of course, there was divine intervention to turn it into wine; in which case, hey! No problem.

Updated: 08:27 Wednesday, December 08, 2004