But new rainbow coloured cauliflowers could tip the balance in their favour in the fight for healthy food on the dinner table. The vivid orange, emerald green, and shocking pink varieties of the humble vegetable are hoped to widen its appeal to youngsters and combat a dip in demand.

Along with traditional white varieties, they will be sold in a "rainbow pack" from Saturday, exclusively by Tesco.

Grown in Lincolnshire, the coloured cauliflowers are all naturally produced but have been crossed with other types of the brassica family, which includes green cabbage and broccoli, to make exciting colour variations and boost falling sales.

The move is hoped to help improve cauliflower's popularity after it was overtaken by broccoli.

Tesco said statistics from retail analysts Kantar Worldpanel show in the last two years volume sales of cauliflower have fallen by 6.5% across all retailers while demand for broccoli has grown by 2.5%.

Tesco greens buyer Jeni Gray said: "These cauliflowers are almost works of art and have a real wow factor that should really create a stir with shoppers and hopefully children at dinnertime. Cauliflower got its poor image from baby boomer generation schoolchildren who generally loathed them as they were always being told to eat their greens for health reasons.

"When food was rationed during and after the Second World War cauliflower became part of the nation's staple meat and two veg diet at school and at home. However cauliflower appears to have lost out to broccoli (as) in the last few years it was being hailed as a 'superfood' by health and food experts."

The rainbow cauliflowers have been grown exclusively for Tesco by one of the UK's largest growers of brassica, TH Clements of Benington, near Boston, Lincolnshire.