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Landmark media alliance and advertising campaign is back after the 2019 campaign sees 650,000 children eating more vegetables

Eat Them to Defeat Them, the award winning campaign to encourage children to eat vegetables, is returning as part of a ground-breaking £10m media alliance between ITV, Channel 4 and Sky, aimed at improving children’s physical health over the next three years.

The landmark campaign originally launched in January 2019 as a collaboration between ITV and Veg Power.

Eat Them to Defeat Them 2019 proved hugely successful, with over 650,000 children eating more vegetables and 18 million more units of vegetables sold – enough for an extra portion of vegetables on every family dinner table in the UK for each week of the campaign. This proof-of-concept showed the positive power of media in changing behaviour.

The campaign is now back and ready to make a bigger statement in 2020 – this year Eat them to Defeat Them launches with a roadblock advertising campaign across ITV, Channel 4 and Sky on Saturday 15th February at 7:30pm, with a combined donated spend of £3 million in broadcast airtime. This will enable a reach of 80% of housepersons with children, in the biggest ever single campaign to promote vegetables in the UK.

In addition to the donated media spend, it is funded by a wide partnership of food brands (Aldi, Asda, Birdseye, Co-op, Lidl, Marks and Spencer, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s and Tesco), and pro-bono contributions from advertising and media partners.

Following the launch and throughout the seven-week campaign, the initiative focuses on a different vegetable each week, encouraging children to join the fight to defeat the vegetables. Over 1,500 schools will also be taking part, with vegetable-related canteen recipes, posters and 450,000 reward charts and sticker packs for kids to take home.

The 2019 campaign results really blew us away - showing Eat Them to Defeat Them is a powerful behaviour change tool to get kids eating healthily. So ITV are delighted to be leading it again, mobilising an even bigger alliance of partners, and we hope to get hundreds of thousands of children eating more vegetables as a result.Clare Phillips, Director of Social Purpose at ITV

Changing children’s perception and habits of vegetables will need radical and daring communication. Lecturing will never work, challenging them will. And that’s what our campaign did and that’s why it’s beginning to work. Sir John Hegarty, founder of the agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty

The Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign has driven real behaviour change, and is loved by children and adults alike. We've proven that the power of creative advertising can inspire children to eat more veg and reduce their chances of developing diet-related illness, so it's crucial that we build on this success: industry, business and Government must forge ahead and promote veg in more dynamic and creative ways. Dame Rosie Boycott, chair of Veg Power

Eat Them to Defeat Them is part of our wider Better Health priorities to encourage 10 million people to take action in supporting their physical or mental health by 2023.