Food Dudes!
What is Food Dudes?
Food Dudes is an award winning curriculum-linked evidence-based healthy eating programme, developed to encourage children to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables. It is based on repeated tastings of fresh fruit and vegetables, rewards and positive role models.
It works by changing children’s attitudes towards healthy eating, allowing them to cultivate a liking for fresh fruit and vegetables. Built and developed on three pillars of scientific merit, (1) repeated tastings, (2) rewards and (3) role modelling, Food Dudes has proven itself as an effective evidence-based school-based healthy eating programme.
Phase 1: School-based - 16-day intervention
Phase 1 is a 16-day school-based intervention with repeated tastings of fruits and vegetables. During this time, children receive one portion of fruit and one portion of vegetable on each day, are read a letter or watch a DVD-episode featuring the heroic Food Dudes and are rewarded with stickers or small prizes for eating their fruit and vegetable.
Phase 2: Home-focused - Post-intervention
Phase 2 aims to maintain long-term consumption and extends to the home whereby children/parents are encouraged to bring their own fruit and vegetables to school every day in their special Food Dudes lunchbox. Classroom wall charts are used to record progress and children receive certificates upon reaching milestones at their own pace over time.
Phase 3: Maintenance - Tasting days and specially designed educational materials
Tasting days accompanied by educational materials such as a passport to healthy eating and short informative video clips in years 2 and 3, encourage a listening whilst eating approach to learning. This phase maintains long-term programme engagement post-intervention and continued increase in consumption throughout entire school year. This allows children to develop healthy eating habits for life!