At yesterday's Otago and Southland community and public health advisory committee he was commenting on indicators from the 2006-07 New Zealand health survey which showed vegetable intake in both provinces may have dropped.
In both Otago and Southland it is suggested about 71% of adults are eating three or more servings of vegetables a day.
While this is higher than the national rate of 62.6%, some committee members noted the drop in vegetable intake since the 2002-03 survey - about 5% in Otago and 9% in Southland.
Mr Barron took issue with fellow committee members Louise Rosson and Fiona McArthur, who expressed concern at the price of nutritious food.
Ms McArthur said vegetables were horrendously expensive and people on limited budgets could choose to reduce their spending dramatically by lowering their consumption of vegetables and protein.
Ms Rosson said she was worried about the situation of young families trying to buy food in difficult economic times, and the committee should be voicing its concern about the fact it was cheaper to buy a large bottle of soft drink than 2 litres of milk.
Mr Barron said the cost of basic vegetables, including potatoes, onions, carrots and cabbage, was not high compared with other foods.
Kaye Crowther said more support needed to be given to good parenting programmes helping families to learn how to cook.
It was also a good time to promote breast-feeding, because it was cheap.
Dr Branko Sijnja said the next five-yearly health survey would show whether programmes such as Healthy Eating Healthy Action, which was trying to change the behaviour of school-age children, were making a difference.
