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Number 3/2018 – 11 July 2018
Note from the editor: Healthy lifestyles all year round!
School is out for the summer, but that doesn’t mean your healthy diet and lifestyle is too! This year is flying by but your health is here to stay. If you’re having difficulty staying on track (where did those New Year’s resolutions go?) there’s an abundance of helpful and educational resources available no matter where you are in Europe or the world. From doctors’ surgeries, to schools, to wherever you’re holidaying with the children, the fresh produce sector is with you to help you maintain a happy and healthy balanced lifestyle including plenty of delicious and nutritious fresh fruits and vegetables! Following the digital age, nearly all of the campaigns featured from May and June in this edition have online resources where you can find tasty and healthy fruit and vegetable recipes and information to keep your healthy lifestyle on track over the summer period no matter the location. Look out for more fresh produce inspiration in the next edition of the Fresh Times, which will be published at the end of August 2018.
France: Fruit and Veg 4 Health
Need more nutritional advice from your doctor? You’ve got it! Aprifel and Interfel have launched their three year project ‘Fruit and Veg 4 Health’, which aims to encourage the consumption of fruits and vegetables by equipping medical practitioners with tools and support to give to their patients. The project, which is co-financed by the European Union, aims to reach the general public, specifically young people, pregnant women and those of childbearing age to increase fruit and vegetable consumption from 87kg to 100kg per household per year. In order to do this, Aprifel has developed posters with visuals of fruit and vegetables ‘X-rayed’ to be hung up in doctors’ waiting rooms as well as fact sheets on fruit and vegetable nutrition. A total of 23,700 communication kits will be distributed as part of the project and Aprifel will attend numerous conferences to promote the project over the three years. In particular, GPs, paediatricians and gynaecologists will promote the project to the target group.
Italy: FRUIT24 coming to you
FRUIT24 is coming to you if you’re holidaying in Italy this summer! FRUIT24 is a project by ApoConerpo and co-funded by MiPAAF and the European Union with the aim of encouraging fruit and vegetable consumption and healthier eating styles to increase consumers’ overall wellbeing. The project involves a roadshow of events with the #Fruit24 truck, which kicked off on the 26 May from Genoa and will travel around cities in Northern Italy and many seaside resorts on the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian coasts during summer and will end on the 21 July in Lerici. At each roadshow stop off, the #Fruit24 truck will be loaded with fresh fruit and vegetables, including imaginative and inspiring fruit and vegetable creations made by a ‘visualfoodist’. Visitors to the truck are able to taste the different creations, and learn how to incorporate fruits and vegetables into every meal during their day by using simple recipes and guides from nutritionists, and play educational games on healthy eating.
Spain: Eat the Mediterranean way!
Do you eat the Mediterranean way? Do you know how to eat the Mediterranean way? This semester, more than 24,000 primary and secondary students from all over Spain have participated in the campaign ‘mediterraneamos’ – ‘Mediterranean’ workshops – organised by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment. The aim of the campaign is to promote food based on the Mediterranean Diet, including plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as the importance of physical activity in children and young people. During the workshops, students have learnt about the main characteristics of the Mediterranean way of life and its benefits to health, and have put this knowledge into practice by creating their own recipes. Since January this year, students have additionally participated in ‘mediterraneamos’ online courses and activities. This includes forming teams and testing their knowledge about the Mediterranean diet in an online contest called ‘Juegapalabra’. Finals of this contest took place in Madrid on the 26 June.
Spain: Learning about healthy diets
Over spring, school children have taken part in the fourth edition of Cuna de Platero’s food education programme ‘Fresayunando – the healthy breakfast of Platero Cuna’. More than 2,500 school children from five schools in Moguer and its surroundings have participated in the programme, which aims to teach students the importance of having a healthy diet combined with physical activity. Specifically, the children received training on healthy eating, physical exercise and fruit and vegetable consumption. Collaborating with Cajamar Caja Rural, the programme emphasised the importance of a good, balanced diet with fruits as a prominent feature. The programme also targeted parents to ensure that lessons learnt in the classroom were also being reinforced in the home eating environment. As part of the programme, schoolchildren received talks and teaching units using the programme protagonists Teresa the strawberry, Fernando the blueberry, Flora la mora and Adelita the raspberry. Students were also equipped with a cookbook of healthy dinners and school supplies.
UK: Improving health one by one
Do you know why fruits and vegetables are good for us? The London Produce Show 2018 Show Ambassador this year is making this his mission. Dr. Rupy Aujla, an NHS GP, is endeavouring to educate consumers on improving their diets through fruit and vegetable consumption through his debut cookbook and blog The Doctor’s Kitchen. Dr. Aujla strives to explain to consumers the scientific research behind the ingredients in food. Dr. Aujla practices ‘culinary medicine’ where patients’ nutrition needs are combined with the art of cooking to provide them with healthy diets that are sustainable in the long-term. In particular, Dr. Aujla focuses on chronic disease prevention through the consumption of nutrient-dense diets made up of plant-based foods featuring high levels of fresh fruits and vegetables. At the London Produce Show, Dr. Aujla maintained that the most inexpensive and accessible fruits and vegetables on supermarket shelves are highly important to diets and that the fresh produce sector should demonstrate their products’ versatility and accessibility to consumers.
The Netherlands: The FoodFirst Network
Healthy food comes first – food first! This is the mantra of the FoodFirst Network which launched in May in the Netherlands. The FoodFirst Network is an independent video platform for adults who would like to lead a healthier lifestyle. In fact, the network’s mission is to make the whole of the Netherlands healthier within three years! As a paid subscription service, the network offers unlimited access to its platform which offers nutrition and physical activity guidance to help adults lead a healthier lifestyle. Included in the service is a large array of tasty and healthy recipes which heavily feature a diverse array of fresh fruits and vegetables. As well as on food, expert advice is given on exercise, sleep and relaxation. The brainchild of Jan Dekker and master chef and pastry chef Rudolph van Veen, the network now has over 6,000 subscribers. A key aspect of the network is that all advice is given by professionals and is tailored to your individual health needs.
Germany: Our school, our garden
‘Unser Schulgarten’ or ‘Our school garden’ is up and running in Germany! This May the Landgard Foundation officially started its ‘Unser Schulgarten’ campaign in there different federal states across Germany. Only in its pilot phase, five primary schools were selected to participate in the campaign, where each school is provided with plants, gardening utensils and extensive accompanying educational material to begin their own school garden to grow fresh produce. By going through the growing process themselves, the campaign aims to help primary school children learn about healthy fresh fruit and vegetables, how they are grown, and why they’re important in their diet. Consequently, while the campaign imparts knowledge about healthy nutrition to pupils, it also teaches them about their contribution to the environment through the food they eat and how they can take responsibility for it. In the coming year, the campaign is scheduled to be rolled out national across primary schools in Germany. Interested schools from across Germany can already begin applying.
Italy: A healthy F&V lifestyle
Are you a modern consumer with little time and need fast and simple ways to get your fruit and vegetables in for the day? Dole has the answer for you! Building on its ‘My Energy’ campaign run in 2015 and its ‘Natural Snacking’ campaign run last year, Dole has launched a new social media campaign featuring videos about how to include fresh fruit and vegetables in your daily diet. The new videos focus on the needs of the modern consumer including little time, speed and simplicity in meal preparation, the desire for in-depth information about food as well as health and nutrition benefits. This new round of videos is also tailored to social media users, being short, eye-catching and memorable to inspire social media users to consume fresh fruits and vegetables. The videos are divided into four categories, meal prep, lunchbox, smoothie and flatlay, and will be released throughout this year on the Dole Italia Facebook page and YouTube channel.
U.S: Real kiwifruit for real people!
Zespri’s kiwifruit is being brought to life through their new promotion campaign ‘Real Giveaways for Real Life’. Launched on the 6 June, the new campaign will run until the 15 October and feature Zespri’s SunGold Kiwifruit as its centrepiece. The campaign, designed to drive retail sales is a national digital campaign, supported by in-store demos, point of sales materials, geo-targeted digital couponing, display contests and billboards. The highlight of the campaign however is their giveaway promotion where visitors to the campaign website can enter their information for the chance to win a prize pack worth $15,000, in addition to daily and weekly competitions with smaller prizes. The campaign specifically targets mothers, communicating how although there is pressure for a perfect life, parenting isn’t always pretty on the outside, just like Zespri SunGold kiwifruit. The campaign encourages them to embrace life’s imperfections, such as with kiwifruit that is a real and healthy snack that fits their real lives and everything they do for their families.
Brazil: Apples are back!
The Brazilian Association of Apple Producers are making sure that apples are back in focus and in consumers’ shopping baskets! In October last year the Association launched a new campaign to illustrate the health benefits of consuming fruit, and it is here that The Brazilian Apple Club was created. On the campaign’s social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn), the campaign keeps consumers informed about the characteristics of the apple, namely its practicality, portability, health benefits, taste, high food safety compliance and sustainability. To date, the campaign has been very successful with 114 million hits on its social media channels. Targeting people of all ages, the campaign hopes to give consumers the know-how to purchase apples and use them in a healthy, balanced diet. In addition to the Apple Club, a new Association website was launched, which can be accessed by all Brazilian farmers and includes sector news, recipes and a network of contacts in the industry.
Spain: Looking good!
Have you noticed anything different about the ‘5 al dia’ website? Yep that’s right, it’s had a brand new makeover! Since 1999 when the ‘5 al dia’ campaign was launched in Spain, more than 120,000 children have benefitted from its educational advice about the importance of consuming a minimum of five daily servings of fruits and vegetables as part of a balanced diet. The latest campaign makeover has made sure that the pedagogical resources available to children online as part of the campaign are also evolving with the digital and experiential expectations of children. Boys and girls between the ages of 9 and 10 years old are the primary target group of the campaign and the colourful, bright, engaging design of the new website is tailored to help instil healthy eating habits. Notably the website includes characters characterised by different fruits and vegetables, interactive games, information about different types of fruits and vegetables and their seasonality, in addition to a variety of healthy and fun recipes.