Offer a Fruit and Vegetable Challenge!

Finding and trying new fruits and vegetables can be a bit daunting.Help make exploring healthful flavors more fun with a quick and easy contest!This contest is excepted from the Fruit and Vegetable Challenge program that’s available in the Nutrition Education Store. Its goal is to get people to eat more fruits and vegetables every day. It’s engaging, fun, creative, and challenging. So, let’s get started!The Challenge: Try 7 different fruits and vegetables over the course of the week.The Details: Participants must try 7 new-to-them fruits and vegetables over the course of the week, logging their evaluation of each one. They can try all 7 in one big swoop, portion things out to 1 new red fruit or veggie per day, or do whatever works for them.Social Media Component: Participants can take photos of the red fruits and vegetables that they tried and share the photos through social media platforms in order to inspire their classmates and hold themselves accountable for sticking to the challenge.For Pinterest-centric approaches, set up a “See Red” board and have participants “pin” images of their flavor explorations or recipe links onto the board.For Facebook, we recommend making a “See Red Challenge” page that everyone can use to post their status updates.In both of these cases, there will be a central place that people can go when they want to view, comment on, or share photos. Both Pinterest and Facebook offer the option to “like” a post as well.For Twitter, we recommend that people tweet their photos, but add the hashtag #seeredchallenge or #seered. That way, participants can search for that hashtag and see everyone’s progress at once.If photos aren’t an option, people can describe the new fruits and vegetables that they’re trying.Variations and Additions: Brainstorm red fruits and vegetables as a class. Which are in season right now? What’s inexpensive? What’s exotic?Like what you see? For a guide to all 5 challenges, plus a strategy rundown for prize selection and distribution, check out the Fruit and Vegetable Challenge program.