Why did you get involved in the campaign?
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall:It’s been clear to me for some time that at the absolute forefront of turning around the nation’s health is getting the next generation to eat a healthier diet. And at the forefront of that quite simply is more veg and fruit. You can get very technical about all the issues around refined carbs and all the sugar in our diets, and it’s very easy to focus on the negatives of the obesity crisis. But the great positive message from every significant dietary study is that we all need to be eating much more veg. So it seems to me that you can’t take on this great issue of the nation’s health without finding ways to help people eat more veg. That’s at least as important as helping people eat less junk. The two go together.
Often the emphasis is on the negative of getting people to eat less of this and that, but actually, if you push the positives, some of the negatives slip away. The one thing that we know from the extraordinarily successful sale of unhealthy foods is that advertising works. We have been persuaded to eat increasing amounts of high salt, fat and sugar foods, and that unfortunate shift in our diet has been brought about in no small way by very powerful advertising. When you hear that less than two per cent of advertising in the food sector goes on fresh vegetables, you know that’s wrong and is a statistic we need to turn around.
What do you think of the advert itself and the ‘Eat Them to Defeat Them’ message?
HFW:We were excited by the creativity of it. What’s clever about it is it’s moved away from the hectoring, finger-wagging, “eat your greens”, 5 A Day approach, and at the same time, in quite a fun way, it acknowledges the fact that a lot of kids don’t immediately love veg. So we want to get them excited about the idea of engaging with veg and the message that “we’ve got to munch the veg to win the fight” is fun and kids will relate to it.
I imagine we will get a little bit of stick in some quarters for the notion of Eat Them to Defeat Them and veg being a kind of enemy, but that’s been done in such a playful way. It’s edgy, and kids are smart. If you do something boring and straightforward, they’ll just walk away from it. I wholly support the daring and creativity around the ad. If we’d have done something bland and obvious, we’d have wasted an opportunity. The idea we’ll get people talking about this and looking at this issue is really exciting.
How important is it that the produce industry supports the campaign?
HFW:The industry should be ready to really get behind this opportunity, and they are being supportive. Most of the funding for the campaign is coming from the supermarkets themselves, and so we hope this is the beginning of a long-term movement, not just a blip. I’m not saying veg producers should be funding it because I know their margins are extremely tight and it’s quite difficult, but it would be fantastically helpful for them to show their support in every possible way.
In the end we want this campaign around Veg Power not just to be a tick box for the supermarkets now, or indeed for the government to feel that because we’ve taken this on that they don’t have any responsibility to support these kind of initiatives. There is no ‘Brand Veg’, though we hope with Veg Power we have the beginnings of that, and it’s something we all need to pull together on. We need to keep the presence up of the colourful, healthy, exciting vibrancy of vegetables, not just for a couple of months at the beginning of this year, but for a sustained period from here on.
Looking at the proposals from last week’s EAT-Lancet Commission, do you agree that we should be backing a move towards more plant-based diets?
HFW:I think balanced eating is putting plants at the centre of your diet. That is the correct balance and I think sometimes the carve-up of the nutritional plate has not emphasised this enough, and as the Lancet report made very clear there’s an issue of the balance for our planet and the balance for our health, but the two are actually aligned. We are focusing on veg, but of course in the broader sense it’s not just the greens and the roots, but spices, fruit, nuts, seeds, grains – these are the best possible building blocks for a healthy diet.
Do you support more government legislation over junk food?
HFW:I do think you need to restrict the marketing of unhealthy food to kids because it’s just not a fair fight. If you’ve got kids watching their favourite shows on TV or favourite family shows and are bombarded by adverts for unhealthy foods then it’s not a fair fight, because they make that connection not just with the shows but their favourite family moments together. And advertisers know that – advertising works, and it works best when the whole family is sitting together. That’s when you have the most impact.
That’s why we are so pleased with the fact the Veg Power ad is being shown in those slots. And it’s a great and a bold move by ITV to give their support and to make these slots available to the campaign for free. This has to go hand in hand with an education initiative from the government. School time is the appropriate place to get kids enthused and understanding healthy eating. It’s entirely appropriate and indeed vital that it’s included in the curriculum.
What else are you working on right now?
HFW:A new series for the BBC on healthy living. We had our follow up to Britain’s Fat Fight last week. [Secretary of state for health] Matt Hancock has tweeted and held a press conference to announce that he is on board. I hope to see him in person soon and will absolutely be taking the message that promoting fresh produce to families and kids and doing everything you can to make sure the next generation has a healthy diet from the get-go should be right at the top of all the priorities around obesity and our health.
