“I teach students with a range of learning needs affecting their communication and interaction, cognition and learning, sensory processing and social and emotional needs. Our students benefit from the Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign because it gradually introduces vegetables into their diet without overwhelming them and in a child-friendly, fun way. In school, we use Taste Education as part of our cookery and life skills programme and Eat Them to Defeat Them gives us an additional platform from which to explore new foods. We have found that our students engage well with the content, enjoying the funny adverts and characterisation of the vegetables, which supports some of our young people in connecting with the campaign by making it part of pop culture.
Students love to collect the Eat Them to Defeat Them stickers and check off vegetables they have eaten throughout the campaign. Eat Them to Defeat Them opens up conversations about healthy habits and ways to easily build them into our lives. As a special school, we often eat with our students and encourage a family mealtime feeling in the classroom, we even find that students will challenge staff to eat more vegetables and will talk about variety in food.
Last year, we held an Eat Them to Defeat Them: Veg Power day, giving students an opportunity to explore vegetables in different ways through an immersive, themed day. We used peppers to make race cars, dressed vegetables up for a carnival, did science experiments exploring germination and how capillaries in celery carry water. We explored the shapes and forms of vegetables by printing with them, we explored Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s use of fruit and vegetables in his paintings and had a go at recreating them and we made a delicious leek and potato soup to share as a group.
Eat Them to Defeat Them has become a campaign that staff and young people look forward to each year.”
Lauren Carroll – Teacher
Leicestershire and Rutland Teaching School Hub
