Of all the ways to try to get kids to eat their vegetables, Bon Appétit Management Co. may have come up with one of the most effective: teaching kids how to eat—and enjoy, and prepare meals and snacks—with them.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based foodservice-management concern experimented with fun culinary classes for kids last year and now as begun taking a kids nutrition and culinary education program on the road in the San Francisco Bay area, with dozens more classes planned for the coming year.
Bon Appetit’s effective twist is to introduce kids to produce varieties in a fun and social setting rather than to confront them head-on with the need to eat fruits and veggies for their own good, or to play stealth games with them to get them to eat these foods unawares.
“What is special about our program is we’re not trying to hide veggies in pasta, we’re actually bringing them to the forefront,” Hannah Schmunk, community development manager for Bon Appetit, told brandchannel. “What I’ve seen is if you introduce kids to fruits and vegetables in an interactive social setting, where it’s fun and exciting, you can truly shift their taste preferences toward fruits and vegetables and also spark curiosity about new foods.”