Love Your Veggies Internet Press Kit

LOVE YOUR VEGGIES™ CAMPAIGN FACT SHEET

WHAT:	Hidden Valley® Salad Dressing's Love Your Veggies™ campaign was created to help children develop a life-long love of vegetables. While eating vegetables is an obvious necessity, the campaign aims to make the experience an enjoyable one, steeped in education, exploration and understanding of healthy eating. In its efforts to get kids eating and enjoying more vegetables, the Love Your Veggies™ campaign provides moms support in her home and in her community. In the Home: For moms looking for tips, tools and recipes at their fingertips, the makers of Hidden Valley® dressings have developed a wealth of information available on its two web sites: HiddenValley.com and LoveYourVeggies.com. At HiddenValley.com moms and their families can tune into “Garden Party,” monthly Webisodes hosted by celebrity mom Jennie Garth. Garth meets with farmers, chefs, moms and kids to find new and exciting ways to get families to love their veggies. The site also features vegetable recipes the entire family will enjoy. In addition to her Garden Party hosting duties, Garth has provided her personal top tips for helping her three daughters learn to love their veggies. Those tips along with a wealth of information that aims to educate parents on how to introduce and involve kids in a healthy eating experience, including vegetable education, gardening, meal planning, shopping, and cooking can be found at LoveYourVeggies.com. Also featured on LoveYourVeggies.com is Veggie Adventures, an interactive online game that engages families in a vegetable adventure that begins with growing vegetables on a farm and ends with serving and sharing vegetables with friends. This tool provides players and their parents with great tips and vegetable facts in a new and exciting format. In the Community: The information and celebration of vegetables moms can find on-line will come to life on March 11 in New York’s Grand Central Station when Hidden Valley hosts Veggie Central – a veggie-licious celebration of vegetables where Garth will lead New York City school children in a kid-friendly vegetable recipe. The makers of Hidden Valley® Salad Dressings have awarded more than $750,000 in school grants to help kids grow their love of veggies. Now in its fourth year, The Love Your Veggies™ grant program works to support increased access to, and consumption of, fresh produce during school meals. In April the recipients of this year’s $10,000 nutrition grants will be announced. Ten elementary schools nationwide will receive the grants for their demonstration of creativity and innovation in their proposed vegetable programs, as well as a financial need.
WHY:	The makers of Hidden Valley® Salad Dressings know that getting children to eat more vegetables is a concern for many parents. Studies show that about 96 percent of children two to 12 years of age fall short of the recommended 2-5 cups of fruits and vegetables per day.¹ Understanding that ranch dressing can be an enabler to veggie consumption, the makers of Hidden Valley® Salad Dressings created the Love Your Veggies™ campaign to help parents enhance their children’s nutrition. Love Your Veggies focuses on helping children develop a life-long love of veggies with lessons that span from garden plot to dinner plate, with the findings of studies below helping grow the creation of the campaign: The Relevance of Ranch: A study that found children consume more vegetables when paired with a moderate amount of ranch dressing.² Getting Kids Involved in the Process: Researchers at Teachers College at Columbia University found that children who helped cook their own foods were more likely to eat those foods in the cafeteria, and even ask for seconds.⁴ The study was conducted with 600 school-aged children taking part in a nutrition curriculum intended to increase vegetables and whole grains consumption, Making Veggie Eating Fun at Home: Parents participation in a home-based intervention program about fruits and vegetables led to increased knowledge and availability of both in the home. This, in turn, was a significant predictor of their children’s increased consumption.⁵ Making a Difference in the Lunchroom with a Grant Program: The 2004 Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act requires local school districts to design and implement school wellness policies to improve the overall health and nutrition of students. There is an overwhelming shortage of funds available for the execution of these programs and schools struggle to implement them successfully.
FOR MORE:	Visit www.LoveYourVeggies.com or www.Facebook.com/HiddenValley to learn more about the campaign.

¹Produce for better Health Foundation and ACNielsen; State of the Plate; 2005.
² 2006 study of two Northern California elementary schools conducted by the University of California Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program and the Butte County Cooperative Extension.
³ “Carotenoid bioavailability is higher from salads ingested with full-fat than with fat-reduced salad dressings as measured with electrochemical detection.” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2004): 396-403.
⁴ “Do you want your children to try new foods? Try keeping them in the kitchen.” Teacher College at Columbia University. 15 Sept. 2008. www.tc.columbia.edu/news/article.htm?id=6665
⁵ “High 5 for Kids: The impact of a home visiting program on fruit and vegetable intake of parents and their preschool children.” Preventive Medicine 9 Apr. 2008.

Press Contact
Bridget Starkey/ Current
P: 415-262-5987
E: Bstarkey@talktocurrent.com

Jennie Garth

Jodie Shield

Visit the Official Love Your Veggies™ campaign Web site: www.LoveYourVeggies.com.
www.HiddenValley.com