UK: Seafish extends ‘The SuperHumans’ campaign to England – Fishupdate.com

UK: Seafish extends ‘The SuperHumans’ campaign to England Published:  31 May, 2006

SEAFISH has launched ‘The SuperHumans’ campaign into primary schools in England, following its successful introduction across Scotland last year.The SuperHumans is a fun and engaging healthy eating campaign designed to encourage children to eat fish as part of their school lunch. The initiative follows a successful pilot of the campaign which was rolled out to Scotland’s schoolchildren. This was part of the Scottish Executive’s initiative ‘Hungry for Success – A Whole School Approach to School Meals in Scotland’, which aims to ensure that Scotland has a better school meals service.The promotion was well received, and following this successful collaboration, Seafish have been working with Local Education Authorities to launch the campaign to children across England this year.The campaign will begin by targeting 500 primary schools in the north of England (Carlisle, Warrington, Manchester, Stockport, Trafford and Salford), followed by schools in central England and finally in the south of England.Gordon Carson, Catering Services Manager for Children’s Services from Warrington Borough Council, has encouraged Warrington schools to take part in the campaign, he said: “The SuperHumans campaign works to ensure that a fish option is on the menu at least once a week. Children will be encouraged to try this tasty option as part of a healthy balanced diet; especially as recent findings suggest that including oil-rich fish may well improve their school performance as well as their health.” The campaign has been designed to highlight to children the many health benefits of eating fish. It also encourages catering staff in schools to include fish on the menu. Selected schools have been sent promotional packs, featuring colourful and interesting characters called The SuperHumans. The packs include stickers promoting the benefits of eating fish for heart, skin, muscles, bones and brains.The campaign encourages children to eat fish at school by rewarding them with a SuperHumans sticker each time they choose a fish dish. Once a child collects all five stickers in the series they get the ultimate accolade – a SuperHumans Clubcard.The packs also include a catering manual which explains the mechanics of the promotion and includes recipe ideas to encourage catering staff to rise to the challenge of enticing children to eat more fish dishes.Karen Galloway, Youth Marketing Manager at Seafish said: “Our job is to encourage children to opt for the fish dish when offered lunch at the school canteen. We feel we’ve come up with a campaign that will start to educate children and parents but in a fun and involving way. We are really looking forward to developing this campaign further and playing our part in encouraging children to eat more healthily.” The campaign will be closely monitored and evaluated to make sure that it encourages long-term consumption of fish by school children.

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