The award-winning Eat Them To Defeat Them campaign from Veg Power and ITV that has proven to increase children’s vegetable intake is returning for its fourth year in February 2022. This year’s campaign is set to reach 1 million children nationwide and aims to encourage children and their families to adopt life-long healthy eating habits.

The programme will be available for all primary and ASN schools across South Lanarkshire but schools need to register the end of January at Eat Them To Defeat Them to take part and inform the catering team

Commenting on the 2022 Eat Them To Defeat Them campaign, Councillor John Anderson, the chair of the council’s Community and Enterprise Resources Committee, said: “Research has shown that children who eat their five-a-day not only have better physical health but also improved mental health.

“I am delighted that this campaign is returning again this year to encourage our children to eat more healthily and provide parents and carers with some useful tools to help everyone eat smarter.”

Children across the UK’s vegetable consumption levels are consistently not meeting government recommendations. The latest National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS), found almost a third (29%) of primary school aged children are eating less than one portion of veg a day.

With 45% of parents finding it a struggle to get their kids to eat vegetables, the campaign inspires them to eat more veg by combining the power of advertising with a schools’ programme. It brings together a huge alliance including TV advertising, celebrities, supermarkets, chefs, schools, communities and families.

Evaluation of the 2021 campaign confirmed its effectiveness at encouraging participating children and their wider families to eat more veg, with 59% of children participating in the schools’ programme, 11% of parents and 16% of older children (12+) eating more veg.

Dan Parker, Chief Executive, Veg Power said: “We know that vegetable consumption levels drastically need to be improved – for the benefit of our health, wellbeing and our planet.

“We also know that Eat Them To Defeat Them is working and children are eating more veg because of their involvement, but we need to broaden the reach and have more schools and local authorities join us to achieve our mission this year.” 

Eat Them To Defeat Them 2022 will be returning as a seven-week programme running from 12 February to 1 April, once again supported by a £3million advertising campaign donated by ITV, Channel 4, Sky and with support from Aldi, ASDA, Co-op, Dole, Lidl, Sainsburys, Tesco and Waitrose.

Last year, across the UK, the campaign reached 468,000 kids from 1,800 primary schools and since its launch in February 2019 has resulted in sales of an extra 517 million children’s vegetable portions.