Yes?! No? Well the day is still young…!! 

A couple of fun facts about fruits and vegetables:

• Eating fruits and vegetables may be the single most important thing we can all do to protect our health long-term (I’m talking cancer, heart disease, and much, much more).
• Emerging research is demonstrating a relationship between produce intake and well-being, specifically short-term happiness and long-term life satisfaction. 
• Any (and every) type of fruit and vegetable count whether it’s the much-maligned potato (choose not French fried most of the time) or those consumed as juice, canned, frozen, or dried. Intake data shows that forms other than fresh contribute VERY small amounts to our added sugars and sodium intake. 
• As a country, we aren’t consuming enough of them (ok, not fun, but a fact nonetheless…)

These facts have been around for a while—so, why am I talking about it today?  Well, this week the Produce for Better Health Foundation (PBH) unveiled a really cool new campaign, called  Have a Plant^TM, aimed at helping Americans (specifically Millennials and Gen Z) think differently about eating fruits and vegetables. 

I have done consulting work on an ongoing basis with PBH and have had the pleasure of being on this journey with them. 

Here’s what I know about PBH and the new campaign. This organization has always invested in research and let that research drive its initiatives.  Have A PlantTM takes that up a notch (or several). It was informed by consumer food journeys and video diaries; message testing; social media analysis covering 1.2M posts; hundreds of influencer and stakeholder engagements and interviews; and (this may be my favorite and a HUGE differentiator) a deep-dive assessment of over 100 consumer behavior studies by an expert in consumer health behaviors.

Why you should care.

• The public health community has been beating a drum (and, frankly beating our collective heads against the wall) on fruit and vegetable consumption for decades.  The PBH research underlying this campaign indicates that we can be more effective when we shift from “knowledge-based” approaches to those based on “feeling” and “doing”.
• It’s easy to focus on how healthy produce is.  But, we now know that people are more motivated by the emotional satisfaction of consuming fruits and vegetables—not the prevention of some mythical health condition that may or may not occur in the future. 
• Millennials and Gen Z think about fruits and vegetables very differently,  and, therefore, lumping them together can be problematic. Who knew??!  

NEW resources available!!  Check out PBH’s: 

• New interactive web site at www.fruitsandveggies.org, featuring nearly 3,000 pages of content; more than 450 recipes; close to 100 third-party contributors; and almost 20 new series of articles. More than 40 additional series of articles will be added later this year! 
• Facebook engagement and e-newsletters to receive and share information that answers the plea for relevant information that makes shopping for, prepping, and, ultimately, eating fruits and vegetables easier and more enjoyable.
• An elite network of 16 Fruit & Vegetable Ambassadors in Action, comprised of registered dietitians, chefs, sports nutrition and fitness gurus, and lifestyle experts, to offer consumers actionable, no-nonsense advice about enjoying more fruits and vegetables every single day.

What to do now!  Whoever you are, whatever your situation (lifestyle, finances, health status, etc.), whatever your preferences—HAVE A PLANT (several, really) today and every day!! And, follow along with Have A Plant™ to see it come to life—I personally can’t wait!