The “Buddy with Your Body – 5 a day” project, a collaboration between ICA and the Swedish Cancer Society, has attracted international interest. For the last year, the project has been part of a larger EU study on how European children can be encouraged to eat more fruit and vegetables.
For the ninth consecutive year, Swedish elementary school students have been invited to attend a lesson on fruit and vegetables in their local ICA store as part of a collaborative campaign by ICA and the Swedish Cancer Society called “Buddy with Your Body – 5 a day,” that aims is to encourage healthy eating habits early in life. The long-term project even attracted the interest of the EU in 2009, and for the last year has been part of a larger European study, “ProGreens”.
The EU study is trying to determine how much fruit and vegetables European children eat. The hope is to then identify long-term strategies to increase produce consumption. ICA and the Swedish Cancer Society are working with the Karolinska Institute on the project. Swedish students from 27 classes are being visited three times in the fall of 2009 and spring of 2010 by staff from the Karolinska Institute and ICA, who are holding lessons and offering surprises related to fruit and vegetables.
“Encouraging people to eat more fruit and vegetables is something we feel strongly about, so it was really rewarding to be able to meet all these children last fall,” said Christina Karlsson, dietitian at ICA.
In total, ten countries are included in the study. ICA’s training material and inspirational posters from “Buddy with Your Body” have been translated to English and offered to the other countries to use. The initial results of the study are expected in the fall of 2010.