Tell us about Death to Nuggets.
It’s a different kind of voice on the side of promoting good food to kids.
Kids don’t want to be told what to eat, or what to do (no-one does really). Death to Nuggets takes a deliberately different and provocative approach, mixing the silly and the serious in interesting ways.
Big companies selling processed food have slowly created a new normal in our eating habits. The stuff is everywhere, it’s cheap, easy and tasty (sort of). But it’s a trap and today 25% of Aussie kids are overweight or obese. Meanwhile, it’s hard to make the healthier alternative interesting – so that’s the challenge we’re aiming at.
A Disney exec described Finding Nemo as a 4-quartile movie. There’s stuff there for both kids and their parents to enjoy. We want the same. We want adults to get the positive nature of what we’re doing, and for kids to get involved because they want to.
We’re starting by putting on monthly food events in Melbourne. They’re for kids and adults to enjoy together and each one is unique, with a theme through 4 courses created specifically for kids. It a fun family evening with good food at the centre of things.
What inspired you to start Death to Nuggets?
Netflix’s Chef’s Table series was the start. It shone a light on how creative food can be. There were so many great stories of chefs pushing boundaries and producing wonderful and imaginative food.
When I compared Chef’s Table to the food that surrounds many of our kids today – beige, boring, and heavily processed – it was like l was observing two different planets.
This seemed like such a missed opportunity, kids love creative and imaginative things. I asked myself, “Why isn’t someone inspiring them and helping them develop a good relationship with food, rather than sending them to sleep with bad food like nuggets?”
When you look at the statistics around diet and health, you realise it isn’t a ‘nice to do’, it’s urgent. I was a kid when the Ethiopian famine happened in the ‘80s and it left a deep impression on me. Today however, more people in the world are dying from being overweight than underweight. This fact really shocked me. Clearly neither is acceptable but obesity is rising unchecked and I wanted to do something about it.
Tell us about your career and background.
I’ve spent my working life in advertising and communications. I love working with creative people, solving problems of one kind or another. My first CV was styled to look like a wanted poster and it helped me to break into a very competitive industry, I cringe a bit when I look at it now though.
