ITV and Veg Power’s award-winning healthy eating campaign is back for a third year – and the gang is looking fiercer than ever! We found out what the veg have in store for you all this year…

What’s the campaign all about?

Eat Them To Defeat Them is all about encouraging young people to eat healthily and enjoy more veg.

The campaign was first launched in January 2019 and is said to have led to sales of over 517 million additional children’s portions of vegetables. That
adds up to £63 million worth of veg!

What’s this year’s theme?

The theme for this year’s campaign and TV advert is Prepare For Battle. It sees an army of warrior kids vow to defeat a legion of evil vegetables. The kids go through intense training using everyday kitchen utensils, eventually squaring up against the veg on the battlefield. After a terrifying tomato gets forked, all hell breaks loose!

Fun fact: ITV’s The Masked Dancer included a Beetroot character, inspired by the campaign!

Who’s taking part?

A whole host of celebrities are joining in the fun for this year’s ad and voicing the villainous veg. They include Dame Emma Thompson, Amanda Holden, Jamie Oliver, Stephen Mulhern, Giovanna Fletcher and Ranvir Singh.

What else is happening?

As well as the TV advert (which is airing on ITV, STV, Channel 4 and Sky), the campaign will pop up in other ways too. A total of 1,900 primary schools will get to enjoy veg tasting sessions, posters, resources and games. A further 500,000 children are also being given a vegetable reward chart and sticker pack, alongside a puzzle book co-created and funded by Public Health England’s Change4Life campaign.

There’s lots of evidence to show that young people aren’t eating enough of the green stuff. It’s become even more of a concern during the pandemic, with research conducted by YouGov finding that 35% of parents are worried about their children’s diets.

Check out these interesting stats, too:

• A new report called Veg Facts 2021, released by The Food Foundation and Peas Please Partnership, shows that almost a third (29%) of children aged 5-10 years old eat less than one portion of veg a day.
• 89% of children aged 5-10 eat less than the Government’s Eat Well Guide recommendations for veg.
• One in three children leaves primary school overweight or obese.

We’re on a mission to find out what First News readers’ favourite veg are! Let us know below…