With the goal of increasing children’s vegetable intake, VegKIT has mapped out two initiatives that involve the industry supply chain and early primary school settings.
There are two interlinking activities:
Activity 1: Developing new vegetable products
The first activity is to develop new ‘vegetable products’ with sensory properties that are regarded as ‘desirable’ for children.
These new vegetable food product concepts will be driven by sensory science and take into account children’s sensory preferences, knowledge about liking of vegetables and theories about food preference development.
The new product opportunities identified may involve modifications to specific sensory properties such as appearance, texture and flavour, or the creation of new flavour sensations.
Once tested with children, the insights and new product opportunities will be shared with a range of industry and supply chain partners with a view to support developing new vegetable-based products.
Activity 2: Creating opportunities in schools to improve vegetable consumption
The second supply chain activity will focus on creating and testing opportunities to improve vegetable consumption in primary schools by:
- Undertaking analysis of primary school canteen menus to understand where there may be opportunities to increase vegetables on the menu
- Conducting interviews with canteen managers and parent representatives to understand perceived barriers to vegetable consumption and opportunities to change menu plans
- Undertaking an intervention in primary schools to determine whether increasing the availability and type of vegetable products on the canteen menu will increase students’ actual vegetable consumption.
Activity 2 involves collaboration with Healthy Kids Association and Perfection Fresh.
Strategies to increase children's vegetable consumption
