A NEW talent has gotten behind the Australian Onions’ “Secret Serve” campaign which aims to get mums of four to 12-year-old children to include more onions into their meals.
My Kitchen Rules finalist and wholesome, healthy cooking advocate Scott Gooding has thrown his support behind the campaign in order to get an extra serve of vegetables into Aussie kids’ diets.
He attended the Onions Australia Conference to introduce himself as a brand advocate to Aussie growers and share his story.
He took the audience through his humble beginnings where he learned the ropes himself by cooking up a storm in his parents’ pub kitchen after school while they prepared for the night shift.
After studying Sports Science at uni, he then went on to be a personal trainer where he met his friend Luke Hines who became his partner in My Kitchen Rules and following that, his co-author in a range of cook books aimed at eating clean and healthy.
They took traditional junk food recipes and with their knowledge provided the same meal with an amazing taste yet healthier make up, to get more people eating better and taking control of their health.
He bought all this and more with a highly entertaining and relaxed talk, sharing his passions, lifestyle and wit.
He also showed-off the e-book of recipes he helped develop in collaboration with the onion industry.
Free cookbook
THE e-book of “multi-meals” details three family home-cooked meals a week (all with a hidden onion or two), from just one shopping list, one recipe and one 1-2hr cooking session, ideally done on a weekend for the week ahead.
The campaign not only highlights the health reasons as to why it’s important to keep onions on the shopping list for families with kids but also gives practical hints and tips on the right preparation and cooking techniques to hide them from expert eyes and fingers.
Researchers recognised that the biggest challenge for mums was just how busy they were and how cooking dinner for the family, after work and school picks ups/after school activities had become a dreaded chore.
Opportunity knocks
MR GOODING jumped at the chance to work with Onions Australia and Horticulture Innovation Australia as most of his recipes are formed with the base of onions and garlic, both incredibly important for gut health and immunity, two of the most crucial health benefits for children.
With his recipes, his engaging personality and charm, this was a winning formula for mums and something very different to the plethora of mummy bloggers out there providing daily recipes for family food and kid wrangling.
Mr Gooding was filmed cooking up two of the multi-meal recipes and all the resultant dishes were photographed to create a Facebook campaign targeted at main grocery buying mums 30-45, driving them to a landing page on our website to download the book for free.
Just halfway into the campaign, his videos and recipe images have engaged mums enough to surpass all targets for the downloads, and the campaign continues to get the information into the hands of mums, to give them a helping hand and ultimately, get them buying and using more onions.
- The Secret Serve e-book can be downloaded from: http://secretserve.com.au