INTERVIEW: MARCH 2, 2015

​DEBUNKING 'KIDS FOOD': Lynn Fredericks chats with the team at Better Together about the myth of 'kids food.'

​PRESS RELEASE: JANUARY 15, 2015

FIRST BITE CHALLENGE

Kids + new tastes + competition + social media

​January 15, 2015 – New York.  FamilyCook Productions, a pioneer in teaching children nutrition through culinary education, announcedFirst Bite Challengeduring webinar yesterday with the American Public Health Association.

​First Bite challenges children across the country to try a bite of a new and nutritious food. Not candy, sweets or junk food. It could be a fruit or vegetable, raw or cooked, they have never tasted or an unfamiliar dish at a restaurant or family meal. Just a bite. They are encouraged to take a video of that first taste, challenge their friends to do the same and post the video and their challenge to social media with the hashtags #firstbitechallenge #kidsfoodreboot  Simple. Healthy. Fun.

​“Parents often encounter big hurdles to get their kids to take that first bite of something new,” says FamilyCook founder Lynn Fredericks. “First Bite Challenge is designed to support them and turn the process into a fun, social media activity.”

​First Bite Challenge grew out of theFamilyCook’s Kids Food Reboot: Serving Our Children Bettercampaign whose goal is to have chefs and restaurateurs rethink the ubiquitous “kids foods” and help parents expand their children’s food experiences and preferences. While it will take a cultural shift to make wholesale changes in our culinary landscape, Kids Food Reboot is one step in that direction. Top chefs across the country have been enlisted to adapt one or more of their restaurant’s popular adult menu items for 4 to 8 year-olds. The chefs include Border Grill’s Mary Sue Milliken in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Equinox’s Todd Gray in D.C., Bantam + Biddy’s Shaun Doty in Atlanta, and Bayou Bakery and The Travel Channel’s American Grilled host David Guas in Va., among others. The chefs a steered to choosemyplate.gov which provides guidelines to make the amount of protein smaller in proportion to whole fruit, grains and vegetables.

​Fredericks conceived the Kids Food Reboot campaign and First Bite Challenge because she understands that most parents are flummoxed about how to get their children to eat a larger variety of healthy foods.  She has seen firsthand that children can embrace delicious, interesting and, even unfamiliar flavors under the right circumstances. For the past 19 years since founding FamilyCook, the organization has taught healthy cooking skills to thousands of K-12 students across the country.  Research conducted on FamilyCook’s culinary programs has shown that children are willing to try new foods and embrace them in a supportive environment.

​Chef Gray, father of a teenaged son, agrees. “With the right encouragement, kids will eat anything.”

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FamilyCook Productions (FCP) www.familycookproductions.com is a nonprofit organization founded in 1995 to teach nutrition through cooking to K-12 students and their families. FCP has reached over 200,000 families nationwide and spawned over 130 programs in 26 states. Along with HealthCorps and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, FCP is collaborating on an NIH funded research project to determine best practices to change behaviors that have been shown to cause obesity. FCP was founded by Lynn Fredericks, cookbook author, food activist and food and wine journalist. She is the author of Cooking Time is Family Time (William Morrow 1999) and, with Mercedes Sanchez, MS, RD, Get Your Family Eating Right! (Fairwinds Press, August 2013)

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