If you want kids to eat healthy foods like

If you want kids to eat healthy foods like Virginia apples and other produce in the Five yAA Day program, you’ve got to speak their language. This means never saying, “it’s good for you.”

That’s the advice the Virginia Apple Growers Association is giving to cafeteria workers across Virginia. At a recent conference in Norfolk on the Five A Day program for the Virginia School Foodservice Association, the Virginia Apple Growers Association advised cafeteria managers and workers to use several modern marketing techniques including appealing to their young consumers’ sweet tooth, joining the diet kick and offering taste samples in the cafeteria. You can do the same at home.

“With the rare exertion, children aren’t going to eat apples or other fruits and produce in the Five A Day program because they’re good for them. To reach kids, we need to send another message,” explained Nancy Israel, Executive Director of the Virginia Apple Growers Association.

“After all, we’re competing with zillions of advertising messages bombarding our kids everyday. We’ve got to do a sales job on the kids just like Taco Bell does, just like Nike does, just like the Gap,” Israel continued. “This means using key advertising strategies.”

First Israel recommends picking the right product for kids. And since most American kids have a definite sweet tooth, the right product would be one of Virginia’s many sweet varieties of apples including Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Ginger Golds, Galas, Fujis and Romes.

Joining the diet kick is another way to get teens to choose apples and other Five A Day produce. “Unfortunately, our kids are preoccupied with fad diets with no thought to good nutrition. While most kids don’t care that apples have no cholesterol and are in fact cholesterol reducers, they do care that apples have no fat because kids, especially high school teens, don’t want to gain weight.

The fact that apples have no sodium is