Celebrities become Evil Veg in Brand New TV Advert to Launch Third Year of Eat Them To Defeat Them' Campaign for ITV and Veg Power
Dame Emma Thompson, Amanda Holden, Jamie Oliver, Stephen Mulhern, Giovanna Fletcher and Ranvir Singh voice evil veg characters in the latest advert to get children to eat their veg
Prepare for Battle' is the theme of the latest ad in the award-winning campaign from Veg Power and ITV, supported by STV, Channel 4 and Sky and sponsored by an alliance of supermarkets and food brands
Campaign is proven to get children eating their greens, driving additional sales of over 500 million portions of vegetables since launch
A New Report, Veg Facts 2021, shows that almost a third (29%) of children aged 5-10 years old eat less than one portion of veg a day
89% of children aged 5-10 years eat less than the Government's Eat Well Guide recommendations for veg
An army of warrior kids vows to vanquish a legion of evil vegetables in the brand new TV advert for ITV and Veg Power's highly effective Eat Them To Defeat Them campaign, created by adam&eveDDB, supported by a multi-million media alliance between ITV, STV, Channel 4 and Sky, and funded by 10 food and retail brands.
The cackles, grunts and groans of the evil attacking vegetables have been hilariously voiced by top celebrities including Dame Emma Thompson, Amanda Holden, Jamie Oliver, Stephen Mulhern, Giovanna Fletcher and Ranvir Singh in a bid to build on previous successes in getting children to eat more vegetables. One in three children leaves primary school overweight or obese, and eating vegetables is core to a healthy diet.
This comes with a new report from the Food Foundation showing almost a third (29%) of children aged 5 to 10 years old eat less than one portion of vegetables a day.
Called Prepare for Battle', the campaign carries on the successful strategy of positioning the evil vegetables as an enemy where the children become the heroes and have to Eat Them To Defeat Them. This counter-intuitive approach has already proven to be very effective with kids, parents and schools all confirming it actually gets kids to eat more vegetables. 81% of school staff stated that the campaign was more popular than other healthy eating initiatives. 76% of kids in schools said the campaign made eating veg more fun.
Since the campaign debuted in January 2019, it has led to sales of over 517 million additional children's portions of vegetables worth £63m.
The new hero 60-second spot starts with the news that evil veg are back. We then see kids from across Britain pledging to make their foes wish they were never grown'. In a montage, the kids undertake intense training using everyday kitchen utensils, eventually squaring up against the veg on the battlefield. The first shot is fired, in the form of a fork piercing a terrifying tomato, before all hell breaks loose. As the army charges forth, one of the warriors turns to camera, demanding of her fellow children: Will you just sit there? Or are you with us?
Prepare for Battle' launches on Saturday 29 May including in ITV's new show, The Masked Dancer. The Masked Dancer includes a Beetroot character, inspired by the campaign. The new Eat Them To Defeat them ads will also run in major shows on Sky, Channel 4 and STV, and feature in editorial including Martin and Roman's Weekend Best, James Martin's Saturday Morning, Alan Titchmarsh's Spring into Summer, and ITV Daytime.
The campaign is set to reach 5.2 million households with children, thanks to donated media from ITV, Channel 4 and Sky, as part of their £10 million commitment to promoting healthy lifestyles for children.
The campaign is funded by 10 major food retailers and brands - Aldi, Asda, Birds Eye, Co-op, Lidl, Total Produce, Ocado, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose. Media agency Essence have planned the off-air media for the campaign, securing pro-bono contributions from advertising and media partners, including Pearl and Dean, News UK, Mail Metro Media, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Verizon, Spotify, Mail Online, Mumsnet, LadBible, Snapchat, Twitter, Acast, JCDecaux, First News, Clear Channel and Ocean Outdoor in a huge drive to encourage children to feel more enthusiastic about eating vegetables.
This year the campaign is rolling out into 1,900 primary schools with veg tasting sessions, posters, teaching aids and games, and into the homes as 500,000 children will be given a vegetable reward chart and sticker pack, alongside a puzzle book co-created and funded by Public Health England's Change4Life campaign.
A new report, Veg Facts 2021', being released by The Food Foundation and Peas Please Partnership, reveals that almost a third of children between 5-10 years old eat less than one portion of veg a day. The Eat Them To Defeat Them campaign shows how advertising can be used to inspire kids to eat a healthier diet. The situation does not improve with teenagers with only 6% of teenagers aged 11-16 years old currently eating enough veg to hit the recommendations in the Government's Eatwell Guide.
Research conducted by YouGov, commissioned by ITV and Veg Power for the campaign found that 35% of parents worried about their children's diets during the pandemic.
Evil Vegetable Cast List
Carrot - Jamie Oliver
Broccoli - Giovanna Fletcher
Pepper 1 - Emma Thompson
Pepper 2 - Ranvir Singh
Sweetcorn - Stephen Mulhern
Tomato - Amanda Holden
Baroness Rosie Boycott, Chair of Veg Power Board, said: We are delighted that Eat Them To Defeat Them has returned for its third year and is set to reach even more children across the UK. As our mission is to get the UK eating more veg, engaging with children on this topic is crucial as not only will it improve their health but encourage life-long eating habits.
Susie Braun, H
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Celebrities become Evil Veg in Brand New TV Advert to Launch Third Year of Eat Them To Defeat Them' Campaign for ITV and Veg Power
