Results from consecutive Australian Health Surveys show children are not consuming enough vegetables. In fact, only 6% of children aged 2-17 years of age eat the recommended amount.
The $4 million, five-year national VegKIT project brings together science and industry with CSIRO, Flinders University and Nutrition Australia working together to deliver an integrated approach to improving children’s vegetable intake by engaging with government, industry and the places where children learn and eat.
The objective of the project is to deliver an integrated program of research and development activities to increase children’s vegetable related knowledge with the ultimate aim of increasing vegetable intake by more than half a serving per day for every child. With that goal in mind, there is potential to increase demand for vegetable produce by 19,000 tonnes per year if every child (aged from two to six ) increased intake by half a serving or more per day.