In conversation with… is a series of blog posts where I’ll be talking to inspirational people working in the world of food policy. Todays ‘In conversation with’ features Dan Parker, Chief Executive of Veg Power.
For 25 years Dan worked in marketing and advertising for some of the world’s largest food corporations. However, he had an epiphany realising that their ultra-processed food he helping promote was harming people’s health and wasn’t making the world a better place. So, he closed his ad agency and started Veg Power, a not-for-profit dedicated to getting kids to eat more vegetables.
Six years later he has built an alliance of over 500 organisations contributing their resources, funds and time to create truly impactful campaigns. 77% of parents agree that their children ate more vegetables thanks to Veg Power’s Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign and have widely recognised that it has made a positive and long-term improvement to their children’s diet. Dan’s story shows how powerful a change in focus can be. With the help of hundreds of supporters, he’s making veg cool for kids and creating lasting change.
Afternoon Dan, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. Firstly, you have an extensive background in marketing for some of the world’s largest food brands. What inspired you to make the shift to focusing on public health and children’s nutrition?
Thanks Dayna. So, in my mid-40s, I was running my own agency, working with big clients like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, which had been my bread and butter for years. Then, at 45, I got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, which unfortunately runs in my family. I decided I wanted to manage it through diet and lifestyle instead of pills, so I threw myself into learning everything I could.
That led me out of my little Soho bubble. I started meeting people in diabetes clinics, attending conferences, and hearing from experts about how the very products I was promoting were linked to diseases like cancer and diabetes. It hit me hard—I realised I might not be making the world a better place.
I thought about my family—my son never met my dad, I never met my grandfather, and they all died from obesity-related diseases. So I also felt like I wasn’t just not helping the world, I was contributing to my own family’s unhealthy cycle. So, I shut down my agency. I couldn’t keep doing work that felt, frankly, wrong.
I started volunteering for Jamie Oliver’s Sugar Smart campaign and going to public health events. But I was shocked at how little understanding there was about what actually drives people’s food choices. That’s when it clicked for me: public health is a communications challenge. The same skills I used to sell Coca-Cola and McDonald’s could actually help get people to make healthier choices. And that’s when I decided to put my experience to better use.
Given your background in working with major food brands, what do you think the food industry’s responsibility should be when it comes to promoting healthier eating habits among children? Do you see a role for public-private collaboration or do the government primarily need to take a more interventionist approach to regulating the food industry?
I might get a bit controversial here. Companies aren’t people. They don’t have souls, they don’t have morals. They operate under two main conditions: to obey the law and to maximise shareholder return, however that might be defined by the shareholders. If a financial return is the only priority defined by shareholders then everything else—whether it’s sustainability policies, health initiatives, or diversity—is either legally required or serves only to deliver that goal
And here’s the kicker: most of these companies are owned by pension funds. Ifwhen we sit down with our pension providers, we’re basically saying, “I want my portfolio to be worth as much as possible” then The CEOs and boards get the same message: maximise profits, and here’s your big bonus if you do. Sustainability? Sure, but only if it supports, or least doesn’t undermine profits. Thinking corporations care about anything else is naive.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are amazing, passionate people in these companies who really do care. We’ve both met loads of them. But at the end of the day, it’s not the role of corporations in a modern free market capitalist economy to care about the wellbeing of society. It’s the government’s job to create laws, regulations and frameworks that allow corporations to create wealth whilst protection our people, society and planet. As consumers we ultimately have all the power should we choose to use it, we have our vote, our wallets and our pensions.
If we choose to spend our money differently, businesses will follow. When companies launch vegan meals, it’s not because they care about the planet—it’s because we’re buying them. Expecting capitalism to care about anything other than capital is just unrealistic.
So yes, public-private collaboration can work, but only if there’s a strong legal framework.
And yes, many small businesses, and a few larger ones are different, because they define shareholder value to be more than money.
Following on from that, what has excited you about Labour’s first few months in office? Do you see anything that suggests children’s dietary health is gaining traction as a public health priority?
It’s still a bit early to say, isn’t it? We’ve heard some good rhetoric, and I like what I’m hearing so far. There are three main points in their vision for the NHS, but only one is really relevant to what we do. First, they want to shift to a more digital NHS, which sounds sensible, though I’m not sure exactly what that looks like. Then, there’s the idea of moving the focus from hospitals to primary care—again, makes sense but not my area. The third point, though, is prevention, which I’m fully behind. You can’t save the NHS unless you stop people getting sick in the first place. Right now, the focus is on moving people through the system faster, but the real answer is preventing illness to begin with. There’s a lot of talk about productivity gains too.
So some of the language is right from Labour. But what will it actually mean in practice? That’s still unclear.
To throw in a slightly curveball question, what are your thoughts on the school breakfast club policy? Considering that lots has been in the news this week about the pilot and extension of breakfast clubs across the country.
I think breakfast clubs are brilliant for making sure kids aren’t going hungry—that alone makes me a huge supporter. It’s also great for schools, improving educational outcomes, behaviour, and everything else. It’s just a win all around.
That said, nutritionally, I’m not sure we’re hitting the mark by giving kids refined carbs for breakfast. We can talk about offering veg at breakfast or teaching kids good nutritional habits through these meals, but it’s tough to deliver proper nutrition with the funding and resources available. Still, if it means a child isn’t going to school hungry, I’m all for it.
Veg Power has had incredible success with the Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign. Can you share some insights into the creative process behind this campaign? What were the biggest challenges in shifting children’s (and parents’) perceptions of vegetables?
About six or seven years ago, we pulled together a fantastic team to tackle this. When we looked at campaigns that try to get people to eat more veg, we saw they usually fell into one of three categories.
First, the health scare—”eat your veg or you’ll get sick.” Second, the rustic farmer with muddy veg in a wicker basket—doesn’t really connect with most people’s real food experience. The third, and my least favourite, is those irritating dancing vegetable characters. These campaigns have all been done, over and over, without much success. Take “Five a Day,” for example. It raised awareness but did little to increase uptake of eating more veg.
The problem is these campaigns don’t tap into the psychology of why people choose food. The food industry knows this—it’s all about emotions, not knowledge. We don’t shop with our brains; we shop with our feelings. So we asked, how do kids feel about veg? We found that food, especially veg, has become a power struggle between children and their parents. It’s one of the few things kids can control, so of course they push back. On the parents’ side, it’s all about risk: “Will my kid eat this? Will it cause an argument? Will it end up in the bin?” Veg is seen as risky. Meanwhile, a pack of biscuits is a no-risk option—it’ll definitely get eaten, and if you don’t buy it, there’s backlash.
That’s where Eat Them to Defeat Them came in. We realised we had to put kids and parents on the same side, which we did by creating a shared “enemy”—the vegetables. The idea is fun and unexpected: the veg are taking over, and the only way to stop them is to eat them. It makes kids laugh, and crucially, it aligns parents and kids instead of pitting them against each other.
The campaign’s core is about turning that excitement into action in schools. The magic happens when kids try the veg in a positive peer environment. Then, they get a sticker—kids love stickers—but the real power is when they take that sticker home. It’s a conversation starter with their parent or carer, who might then say, “Shall we try broccoli at home too?” That’s how the behaviour starts to shift from school to home, which is key. Food habits form at home, not at school.
We’ve had some big challenges. First, convincing the public health community to accept our unconventional approach—when they were expecting wholesome farmers and wicker baskets, they got a veg battle scene. It shocked a lot of people. Then, there’s getting school leadership on board. Some schools are engaged and doing great things already, but where leadership is less engaged, it’s tough. Pushing the campaign home has been a challenge too, but we’ve made huge progress.
Of course, the biggest challenge is always funding. We’re in about 15% of primary schools, and the data shows it’s working. We’ve seen a 6% shift towards kids being “veg positive” over the last three years. In schools that have taken part in Eat Them to Defeat Them, that figure jumps to 11%, and for schools that have done it more than once, it’s up to 21%. So, we know the programme is making a real impact—it’s just a matter of scaling it up.
With childhood obesity being such a pressing issue in the UK, how do you see campaigns like Eat Them to Defeat Them complementing governmental health policies, such as the upcoming restrictions on junk food advertising?
This is a critical point for me. Obesity comes down to three factors: genetics, environment, and choice. Genetics play a big role, and research in that area is fascinating. We also need to improve our environment—junk food marketing, Healthy Start, healthier high streets, food education, and more. But even if we do all those things our food environment will still be very challenging, society is not going to ban chocolate or burgers, or tax them out of reach these products aren’t going away, so people will still have to navigate a challenging environment.
That’s where we see our role coming in. We work to inspire, engage, educate, and support people to help them navigate this challenging food environment. Yes, we need to push for less of the negative pressures, but we also need more focus on making the better choices more exciting and appealing. Right now, 95% of the energy is going into the policy levers we can move to make our world less obesogenic, but we’re not putting enough emphasis on helping people navigate it.
It’s not about blaming or finger-pointing. It’s about guiding and supporting people to make better choices in a challenging world. People crave agency, and when you take it away, they react strongly. Look at Brexit and the rise of populism—much of that comes from people feeling they’ve lost control over their lives. So, we must be careful not to strip people of their agency. If we suggest that they’re helpless victims of their environment, we’re taking away their power. People need to be empowered, not undermined. Agency is fundamental to human nature.
The latest Veg Power initiative, Simply Veg, aims to address the challenges of the cost-of-living crisis whilst promoting healthier eating. How do you balance affordability with nutrition in your messaging, especially for lower-income families?
There’s a subtle complexity to this topic. I don’t like the narrative that healthy food is financially expensive, because actually, healthy food is more about time, effort, and risk. If you know what you’re doing, you have time and you’re confident it’ll be eaten, healthy food is cheap. But if you don’t, it can feel costly—like buying bags of salad that end up in the bin.
So, the idea that healthy food is expensive in cash terms is misleading. It’s not the cost; it’s the difficulty. If it goes to waste, it becomes expensive in every sense. What we’re doing with Simply Veg is making things easy. It’s all about small steps, accessible advice, and keeping things simple. For instance, we’re working on a “six herb strategy”—so everything we do would use one of six herbs you probably already have in your cupboard. It’s about removing the overwhelm and making healthy cooking feel manageable for everyone.
Lastly, what’s for dinner tonight? Do you have any favourite vegetable-based dishes you like to whip up at home?
I’m actually fasting today. I fast quite a lot, it’s part of how I manage my diabetes. But last night dinner was salmon, broccoli and green beans; it was super healthy. On another day, I may have made a black bean sauce to go with it, but I didn’t this time.