Birds Eye joins Partnership for a Healthier America

WASHINGTON — Birds Eye announced it has joined the Partnership for a Healthier America and has launched a three-year effort to encourage kids to look at vegetables in a whole new way.

"Birds Eye is taking a different approach to helping kids discover the wonder of vegetables by going straight to the source," said Sally Genster Robling, president of the Birds Eye frozen division. "We're asking kids what they think about fresh vegetables in frozen form and inviting them to help us create new veggie products just for kids. By engaging and empowering moms and kids with options available year round, Birds Eye hopes to get more vegetables on America's dinner plates."

Birds Eye said it will invest a minimum of $6 million over three years and will launch a campaign that celebrates and engages "GenVeg" — a generation of kids who want to eat and enjoy their vegetables — and encourage them to do so with help from Nickelodeon's hit live-action series "iCarly." As part of the GenVeg outreach, Birds Eye also will distribute 50 million coupons and bring to market two kid-inspired vegetable products.

"Most people know what they need to do to eat healthier – the challenge comes in lowering the cost, making healthier options more accessible and, maybe most important, getting our kids to actually want to eat their veggies," PHA president and CEO Larry Soler said. "Birds Eye understands that talking to kids differently about eating their vegetables is an important part of helping to change their eating habits. Their commitment embodies the PHA's goal to help make the healthy choice the easy choice – not just by reducing barriers like cost and time, but also by focusing on something we sometimes overlook: taste."