Maybe if the jalapeños were hotter, the corn was plumper and juicier and the apples had that crispy, just-picked taste, more Utah adults would take their mother's advice and eat their fruits and vegetables.

A report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that less than a third of Utah adults eat at least two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables daily. Teens eat even less produce, with just 11 percent of high-schoolers eating at least three servings of vegetables a day.

Patrice Isabella, a nutritionist with the Utah Department of Health, said the biggest surprise in these findings was many Utah residents are not within a half-mile of a store that sells fresh produce. However, most people in northern Utah, and especially Utah County residents, are within just a few miles of something better -- farms, orchards and roadside stands that offer fresh fruits and vegetables.

Farmers would like nothing more than to help Utah reach a national goal of getting three-fourths of the adult population eating two servings of fruit a day and half of Utahns eating three servings of vegetables a day. You might even like it, they warned, even as you're lowering the likelihood of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and other conditions.

"If you've only eaten store-bought tomatoes or a tomato on a hamburger from a fast-food restaurant or even in a sit-down restaurant, you've never eaten a real tomato," said Jack Wilbur of Bountiful, who calls himself an urban farmer. "There's nothing that compares to a locally grown tomato that you pick fresh off the vine."

Part of the problem, Isabella said, is that people are turning to restaurants for their nutrition. Decades ago people didn't eat out. Even 10 or 20 years ago eating out was a treat for many families. Today, it's much more common, and with the economy, it's more likely to be fast food.

People also are cutting back on budgets, and fresh fruits and vegetables aren't in the economy section. Produce costs more than many other grocery items, and it can be more expensive at a local stand or farm than at a grocery store.

"It does cost more per calorie to eat healthy food than to eat unhealthy food," Isabella said. "You can get a lot more calories for your dollar if you eat Twinkies than if you eat apples, for example."

Speaking of apples, Tod Rowley is pretty sure people who try one of his won't want to go back to their non-fruit-eating days.

"Apples, that's still the No. 1," said the owner of Rowley's South Ridge Farms in Santaquin. "A lot of people come in for ice cream and end up with some apples and vice versa."

The farm sells many other produce items, but apples always have been a best seller, and they will be less expensive than grocery stores because he's cut out the middleman, the shipping and the special packaging. They pick their apples, move them across the street and sell by 38-pound boxes.

The apples also stay fresh longer because they're stored in a cooler all the time and kept in a mostly oxygen-free environment, which retards the ripening process. So, Rowley said, he'll have fresh apples in the middle of winter.

"Those apples taste as if they came right off the tree," he said.

That taste brings buyers, even when locally grown produce costs more, which it frequently does at farmer's markets and stands because the farmers have to recoup all of their costs on that crop, unlike at a grocery store, which spreads the cost over all of its products.

"To me, the taste sells the local food," Wilbur said.

The taste also sells it for Valerie Clark of Orem; she's a vegetarian, so she has no problems getting enough fruits and veggies in her diet. She's also willing to pay extra to buy local, but said she often doesn't end up paying. On Thursday she was on her way to the neighbors to pick up a box of plums that they'd just picked. She has her own garden, she has friends who own farms and provide them with produce, and she pays attention to local farms so she can go out and pick fruits and vegetables.

"It can be more expensive, or it can be free," she said.

Lisa Tolton of Clinton said most days she averages two to three servings of produce, and during the winter, that's almost always frozen from the grocery store. It is more economical for her family to shop at grocery stores, although she likes farmer's markets in the summer.

"It's just never been a priority," she said of why she doesn't eat more.

That's not uncommon, Isabella said.

"Some people just don't have a habit of including fruits and vegetables in their diet," she said.

Donna Maughan, who is visiting Utah from Colorado, said she doesn't get enough fruits and vegetables, "probably because of my good chocolate diet."

Nor is she too worried about her own health, although she regrets not ensuring her children ate more produce growing up.

Isabella said the state will be looking at ways to help people get better access to fresh produce, including talking to local school districts about getting fresh options into school vending machines. She encouraged those struggling with grocery bills to skip the snacks and use that money for fresh produce instead. Fruits and vegetables are part of a healthy diet, she said.

And if all this isn't enough for you?

"There's even antioxidants, they claim like in the tart cherries, that end up working off the flu," Rowley said.

• Heidi Toth can be reached at (801) 344-2556 or htoth@heraldextra.com.