Prince Harry gets children to eat their greens

Father-to-be Prince Harry has displayed an impressive ability to convince children to eat their greens during a visit to a south London youth club.

The Duke of Sussex was helping to serve up lunches in Streatham to highlight the problem of holiday hunger, where thousands of children are going without a hot meal during the school holidays.

Harry was given the responsibility of dishing out the salad to go with a pasta bake.

Putting on his gloves, he said: “Huh, I get given all the stuff they won’t want in this lunch.”

Serving the first child in the queue he said: “You’ve got to have one of these,” pointing to the bowls of cucumber, tomato and lettuce.

And his sales pitch had a high success rate, convincing several children to take more salad than they asked for.

One child who asked for three bits of cucumber was told by the Prince: “Three? How about four?”

His visit was to support the Fit and Fed project run by the organisation Street Games.

The campaign provides children and young people with free access to activity sessions and a nutritious lunch during school holidays.

Figures show that 73% of the poorest families cannot always afford to feed their children during the school holidays, with three million children and young people affected across the UK, and 700,000 in London.

The closure of youth centres and the need for more facilities for young people is a subject that Prince Harry has spoken passionately about in the past.

Speaking during this latest visit to the Streatham Youth and Community Trust’s John Corfield Centre he said: “We are adding to those issues of social isolation, whether it’s being on your phone or computer games, or whatever it is, for young people nowadays to be brought up in a world like this, we are adding to a whole list of issues that already existed.

“And by closing places like this down, the one place which they have where they can have a normal conversation, be that about mental health, or their lifestyle, be it about issues at home, whatever it is.

“We all understand it, we all get it but these place are literally a community hub, and I don’t think people over the years have actually understood or realised how vital this is to the younger generation.”

As he left he was handed a giant teddy bear by the children as a present for his future son or daughter.

In October, Kensington Palace announced the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were expecting their first child in the spring.

During a recent visit to Birkenhead Meghan told a woman in the crowd that the baby was due in April or May.

Meghan is currently in New York, where it’s thought her friends are throwing her a baby shower.

This weekend the Duke and Duchess will carry out a two day visit to Morocco on behalf of the government, their second joint overseas trip since they married last May.

(c) Sky News 2019: Prince Harry gets children to eat their greens