THERE are lots of clever businesses around but the Lancashire firm growing pink and yellow mushrooms definitely deserves an award.

It’s no wonder Tesco are buying the Smithy Mushrooms’ Pink and Yellow Oyster variety – they know that anything pink will be the first food choice of any girl under seven!

Having just spent a week with two of them it’s clear that the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies has been totally eradicated.

The Disney organisation and their Princesses seem to be to blame. Today’s young girls know exactly what they want – and it has to be pink!

Children can be very picky about what they will and won’t eat, with textures as well as tastes.

But it’s nice to know that these mushrooms are naturally pink and aren’t being interfered with just to pander to food fads.

They obviously fit into the same category as those tiny tomatoes and half-sized bananas.

If there is a god he clearly invented a whole range of fruits designed to be easily handled by small hands.

I’m sure broccoli would be more popular with the majority of youngsters if it was pink or blue but that’s a road we mustn’t go any further down.

Apart from the fact that any dyes used will probably turn out in a few years time to be cancer-causing agents it just ain’t natural.

We’ve quite enough problems already with kids who think spaghetti is grown in alphabetical letters and others who believe a nugget is a part of a chicken’s anatomy.

Thanks to films like Finding Nemo a new generation of boys and girls probably knows now that fish don’t have fingers but I reckon a significant number of four-year-olds do believe the chip is a vegetable in its own right!

When it comes to children’s drinks it’s good to see more and more manufacturers emphasising the fact that they are trying to minimise levels of sugar which we know have negative health effects on youngsters.

Interestingly in hot weather my own non-scientific marketing sample of four under-fives actually tended to shun the large selection of exotically-named beverages bought in advance for them by anxious grandparents in favour of plain, old-fashioned – and free – tap water!

There was a down side to this though. My wife and I are going to have to spend our evenings over the next few weeks sucking from plastic bottles – or effectively pour money down the kitchen sink.