ITV and Veg Power launch celebrity 'veg heads' to mark healthy eating campaign milestone

[Video: Alison Hammond]

ITV and Veg Power launch celebrity 'veg heads' to mark healthy eating campaign milestone

●    Alison Hammond and Josie Gibson, Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer undergo a vegetable makeover to celebrate the return of ITV and Veg Power’s award winning campaign, Eat Them To Defeat Them.
●    The healthy eating campaign sets its biggest target yet, aiming to reach one million children with its bespoke Eat Them To Defeat Them activity packs.

ITV has commissioned a food artist to create images of famous faces from vegetables to mark the return of the award-winning healthy eating campaign, Eat Them To Defeat Them, to schools.

Eat Them To Defeat Them returned this month for its fourth consecutive year with its biggest target yet - reaching one million children with its campaign activity packs.

Celebrating the campaign kicking off in schools, ITV and Veg Power joined forces with Britain's Got Talent food artist finalist, Nathan Wyburn, to create some familiar faces - using only vegetables.

This Morning duo Alison Hammond and Josie Gibson along with political pair Boris Johnson and Kier Starmer have undergone a quirky makeover in a series of vegetable-constructed portraits.

In constructing the portraits, put together using a combination of peas, tomato sauce, sweetcorn, carrots and more, Nathan reused vegetables across the four pictures to help reduce waste.

The campaign's schools programme launches on Monday February 28 and will run for five weeks, with a different family-favourite veg featured each week. 

To encourage kids to eat their veg, participating schools will enjoy veg tasting sessions, posters, teaching aids and games, and one million children will be given a vegetable reward chart and sticker pack to help support veg-eating habits at home. 

The Welsh Government are supporting the campaign by funding a bilingual schools programme for all primary and special schools across Wales.

This comes after the campaign’s ad launched during The Masked Singer finale on ITV. The unique and fun ad continues to appear in primetime family viewing slots.

The £3 million campaign is part of ITV, Channel 4 and Sky’s £10m commitment to promoting healthy lifestyles for children.

Since the campaign debuted in January 2019, Eat Them To Defeat Them has led to sales of almost one billion additional children’s portions of vegetables - worth just under £92 million. 

The campaign is funded by eight major food retailers and brands  -  Aldi, ASDA, Coop, Dole, Lidl, Sainsburys, Tesco and Waitrose. It was developed by advertising agency adam&eveDDB who work on the campaign pro bono. 

Media agency, Essence, have planned the off-air media for the campaign, securing pro-bono contributions from advertising and media partners, including Acast, Spotify, Mail Online, Yahoo, LadBible, Mail Metro Media, Ocean Outdoor, Clear Channel, JCDecaux  and others in a huge drive to encourage children to feel more enthusiastic about eating vegetables. 

Amrit Kaur Dhadwal, Social Purpose Executive, ITV said: “These brilliantly fun veg heads are a great way of celebrating Eat Them To Defeat Them in its biggest year yet. We know this campaign has helped change kids' eating habits and we’re delighted to continue to build on this.”

Dan Parker, CEO, Veg Power said: "Now in our fourth year, we’re thrilled to be reaching 1 million kids across the UK with the Eat Them To Defeat Them activity packs. More children have benefited year on year and encouragingly our evaluation has shown children are eating more veg as a direct result of the campaign.” 

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Notes to Editors

1) For more information about Eat Them To Defeat Them please go here: eatthemtodefeatthem.com
2) More information about Veg Power is available here: vegpower.org.uk