Westmeath mother on secret mission to get children eating veg
One Westmeath mother’s mission to tackle the obesity epidemic and get more children eating vegetables has led her to develop an award winning blog, two best-selling cookbooks and most recently, a range of convenient veggie packed nuggets for kids.
The Hidden Heroes range was developed by Aileen Cox Blundell from Multyfarnham to offer a healthy alternative for time-poor parents who are looking for a nutritional alternative to the often sugar and salt-laden convenient foods targeted at children such as waffles, fish fingers and chicken nuggets.
Aileen’s love of food and concern over the childhood obesity statistics led her to start a personal project Baby Led Feeding in 2015.
Her blog and social media channels have amassed a following of more than 100,000 parents who are eager to find innovative ways of incorporating more vegetables into their children’s diets while avoiding the mealtime battle of the wills.
Speaking about the development of her new product range, Aileen said: “There are currently 880,000 children in Ireland under the age of 12 and only a quarter of them are eating the right amount of vegetables every day.
“I have met mums who have cried over the feeding habits of their children and having listened to so many I felt I had to do something to make a change.
“Our aim with Hidden Heroes is not to replace whole vegetables but to just give children that one extra portion in their diet in a fun way.
“We have sourced the best ingredients and have painstakingly worked on creating a product that contains only good food always – no nasties, no additives or anything you cannot pronounce!”
With an idea for a healthy food product for children, Aileen successfully applied for the Food Works accelerator programme in 2017.
Through this process research showed that the majority of food launches for children were snacks, bakery, dairy, breakfast cereals and chocolate confectionery and the bulk of snacks for kids were fruit-based.
With childhood obesity among the leading health concerns in Ireland and the UK, there was a clear gap in the market for innovation in a healthy vegetable-based convenient food, with no similar product marketed towards children currently available.
Hidden Heroes vegetable nuggets are a blend of sweet vegetables mixed with chickpeas and lightly spiced.
They are then formed into a nugget shape to ensure they look familiar to a child, lightly coated in a batter, breaded, then baked (never fried). The nuggets are cooked from frozen in 15 minutes.
The clean label, vegan-friendly range contains 100% natural ingredients and are a source of fibre, low in saturated fat and have no added sugar or preservatives.
Each portion provides one of a child’s recommended five a day, giving parents complete confidence on portion size.
Hidden Heroes will be the first healthy, convenient product launched for children that fulfils both a clean label for parents while delivering on the ‘one of five a day’ battle.
With childhood obesity on the rise, Hidden Heroes has a significant ambition to become a global player in the food industry and the company plans to export to the UK, France and Canada in the next three years.
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