Educational opportunities around perceptions of, and aversions to, vegetables through digital media (VG16018)

What was it all about?

This investment was all about increasing education around and positive attitudes towards vegetables, with a focus on reaching kids aged 8 to 12 through classrooms. It ultimately delivered Phenomenom – an online resource with videos, lesson plans and activities to help teachers deliver food literacy and nutrition education, that can also be used by families.

The initial stages of the project included research into school-aged children’s perception of vegetables, and how to create positive behaviour change amongst educators, parents, caregivers and kids, which then fed into the development of the project’s resources.

The Phenomenom video series, which is the showcase of the initiative, features children’s television host and chef Alice Zaslavsky, and was produced with advice from a curriculum expert who had previously been involved with the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation. There are 25 individual ‘episodes’, available at phenomenom.com.au. A single long-form summary episode was also developed, for inclusion in Qantas’s in-flight entertainment offerings between September 2018 and February 2019.

Complementing the videos, 50 downloadable PDF resources for teachers were developed, consisting of activities and capsule lesson plans all linked to at least one of the webisodes.