Getting America to eat its vegetables. The baby carrot industry tried to reposition its product as junk food, starting a $25 million advertising campaign whose defining characteristics include heavy metal music, a phone app and a young man in a grocery dugald dodging baby carrot bullets fired by a woman in tight jeans.

Only 26 percent of the nationâ adults eat vegetables three or more times a day, it concluded. On the East Side of Manhattan, crates of heirloom vegetables with names like Lady Zola squash were auctioned for $1,000 each at Sothebyâ s, where the wealthy are more accustomed to bidding on Warhols and Picassos than turnips and tomatoes. Despite two decades of public health initiatives, stricter government dietary guidelines, record growth of farmersâ markets and the ease of products like salad in a bag, Americans still arenâ t eating enough vegetables. Both efforts, high and low, are aimed at the same thing. This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a comprehensive nationwide behavioral study of fruit and vegetable consumption.

Itâ been a busy week for vegetables.