Why kids love unboxing Good & Fugly
One of our regulars recently sent us a video showing just how much her kids love each Good & Fugly unboxing. Thank you for sharing the video, Mel! Seeing the delight on your kids’ faces made our day.
The truth is that it’s hard to get kids to love veggies, but it’s also important, because it’s in childhood that good food habits are set for life.
We’re thrilled that Good & Fugly can be part of the solution, and these surprise unboxings are a big part of that. We love seeing this feedback from families and the fascinating things they do with their Good & Fugly boxes. Keep them coming!
Here’s how one Aussie Mum got her kids to love veggies
Did you know that only five per cent of Australian kids are consuming the recommended serving of vegetables every day? It’s a shocking statistic, but an important one, because creating good eating behaviours in children sets them up to eat well and healthily in life.
We’re thrilled to see Good & Fugly helping parents tackle that challenge.
One of the great things about opening a Good & Fugly box is the joy of discovering what’s in there. Because we source fresh, seasonal produce from a wide range of Australian farmers, there’s always a surprise or two in store, and that makes opening each box a culinary journey in its own right.
What we really love to see is families sharing this experience together. One of our regular subscribers, Mel, shared this wonderful video of a Good & Fugly unboxing, and as you can see, her kids were getting right into unpacking it all!
One of the most effective ways of getting kids into vegetables is to encourage their natural curiosity about things. After unpacking a box of Good & Fugly, a kid is going to naturally want to try the produce they find inside. With a recipe and fun information also included in each box, the child’s imagination is further piqued.
Getting kids to eat more veggies in three quick steps
There are plenty of other things that you can do to encourage kids to give the veggie they find in a Good & Fugly box a go! These include:
1. Making vegetables a story
Build on the curiosity that you’ve encouraged by having the kids help in unboxing the veggies by building stories that the kids can engage with.
For example, create a "Vegetable Adventure" by giving vegetables in the box fun names or superhero personas. The distinctive and unique shapes that you’ll find in the Good & Fugly box will make it easy to be playful with this.
Then use the storytelling to also explain the nutritional benefits of each vegetable hero and how they help kids grow strong and smart. Making mealtime a fun and educational experience like this is a quick pathway to have the kids thinking about veggies in the same way that they do junk food (notice how so much junk food also has a story attached to the advertising and marketing? That’s basically what you’re doing here).
2. Involve the children in the cooking
This is another hugely effective technique. Even if it’s as simple as helping by handing the vegetables to you as you cook, getting them actively involved in the cooking process is a surefire way to encourage the kids to try the food afterwards.
A child who feels ownership over something they’ve been involved with will be predisposed to like it. For new vegetables that they may have never experienced before, the familiarity that they’ll have from handling the produce in cooking will also help them overcome any hesitation they might feel about the new experience.
3. Hide the veggies in sauces and stews.
Of course, if all else fails, there’s the old trick of finely dicing the vegetables and “hiding them” in sauces and other things where the child won’t actually see the vegetable. This is a useful technique because it allows you to slowly increase the amount of vegetables in the food until the child gets used to the taste and is ready to eat it by itself.
Promoting healthy eating is one of the great challenges for parents. With a Good & Fugly box and a couple of useful psychological tricks, it’s very easy to break the stranglehold that the junk food industry has over children and help them see that, yes, fresh produce not only makes you feel better, but it’s delicious too!
