SUPERMARKETS and shops have been urged to reduce the price of fruit and vegetables to help the battle against obesity.

Dr Carolyn Summerbell, an expert in nutrition at Teesside University, made her call after research involving more than 800 obese North-East patients showed that giving GPs special training to help people lose weight did not appear to work.

Greater efforts should be made to improve the consumption of fruit and vegetables in areas where access was poor, said Dr Summerbell.

She said that, even if supermarkets reduced their prices, most people living in areas where obesity was more likely did not have a car.

She said: "They have to rely on a corner shop that probably only stocks a limited range of fruit and vegetables."

The research carried out by Teesside University was designed to find out if the management of obesity could be improved by specialist training for family doctors.

Nine North-East and Yorkshire doctors and researchers took part in the trial.

Despite special training, after 12 months there was little difference in weight between patients whose doctors had been trained and those who received no extra training.

Joanne Coady, the North-East regional co-ordinator of the Five-A-Day programme, which encourages people to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, said more needed to be done to encourage farmers to sell produce nearer to where it is grown.

Graham Ward, spokesman for the National Farmers Union in the North of England, said farmers were working on getting good food - rejected by supermarkets because it was the wrong shape - into local food clubs.

A spokeswoman for Morrisons supermarkets said its main focus was to encourage customers to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables and keep prices low.