FoodBackwards: The DooF Glob (blog)

I want to express my gratitude for your generous support at our second annual DooF-a-Palooza event at Google. I had wanted to post this much sooner. It’s nearly four weeks since the event and we’ve been absolutely overwhelmed in our preparations for our public television launch next year. We also took some time to put together a digest of the event in photos, quotes and basic stats.

I am especially appreciative of the time, money, effort and materials contributed by our sponsors and Sourcerers in order to participate. Their passion and enthusiasm made the event the success it was, and it was clear that the kids and families who attended the event got a chance to experience something very wonderful and unique.

The event exceeded our wildest expectations, allowing kids and their families an intimate understanding of food through the fabulous range of hands-on activities that were the fruit of our collaborations. Looking out over the crowd, it was clear that they were completely immersed in what they were doing, and stayed that way the entire day.

From the Google side, the event was considered to be a great success! The Google Culinary team contributed over 150 volunteers to the event and very much enjoyed getting to work with all of you. We were especially appreciative of the “model sourcerers” who contributed both their time and their products to the event. A special shout out goes to:

• Barefoot Coffee Roasters
• Bassian Farms
• Charles Chocolates
• Clean Fish
• Earl’s Organic Produce
• Greenleaf Produce
• Interactive Parenting Media
• Kaiser Permanente
• King of Mushrooms
• Monterey Bay Aquarium
• Monterey Fish
• Nick Sciabica & Sons
• Obentec
• Planet Organics
• Second Harvest Food Bank
• 4H Youth Development
• Straus Family Creamery
• Sunset Scavenger

We’d also like to thank ALL of you for contributing the time and effort that it took to make our dream-event a reality. Here at Google, the culinary team is used to feeding large crowds for all sorts of reasons - from everyday lunch to large-scale celebrations and fundraisers.

This event was different, though.

At DooF-a-Palooza, the chefs were not simply the help, but the main attraction, along with all of you!

That made the work all that more enjoyable and the end result was tangibly magical.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!

We hope to see you all again at the next DooF-a-Palooza.

Mike, Mirit and the entire DooF-a-Palooza Team

(Download the DooF-a-Palooza 2008 Digest)

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What an amazing turnout!

DooF-a-Palooza was an amazing success, from this humble photographer’s eye.

There was so much to see, and everywhere I looked, adults and children alike were engrossed in various activities presented by the numerous “Sourcerers” on hand, as well as trying out all the scrumptious food!

There was a huge lounge area where visitors saw videos of themselves taken around the campus in what must have been minutes (or maybe 10’s of minutes) before.

In one of the campus’s cafe was a makeshift studio, where celebrity chef Joey Altman held his Kitchen Sink Cook Off, a friendly competition between teams of kids to see which team put together the best tasting pasta salad — all caught on video and recorded onto DVD for the participants.  How cool was that!

Here are some teaser photos from the day:

See the full set of photos in our Photo Gallery

Check out our 30 second radio ads for DooF-a-Palooza. They’ll be running in English on 98.1 KISS-FM Sundays between 9-10 AM on the Childhood Matters Radio show (also K-Ocean 105.1 FM) and in Spanish on KLOK (1170 AM), Tricolor 99.5 FM, KBBF (89.1 FM), KSES (107.1 FM) and KMBX (700 AM) Sundays from 8-9 AM on Nuestros Ninos.

Check them out!

• DooF-a-Palooza Radio Spot
• DooF-a-Palooza Radio Spot (Spanish version)

DooF-a-Palooza ad in Bay Area Parents

We’re pleased to announce that our own media blitz for DooF-a-Palooza began today with ads in the the June Edition of Bay Area Parents. Please check out the latest issue and help spread the word.

Teaser in the DooFLetter

For those of you who are subscribed to our “DooFLetter”, you should have received a nifty-looking email teaser that looked like this:

The DooF-a-Palooza Landing Page (updated)

And, of course, for the rest of you who have subscribed to the Glob (this blog) itself in an RSS reader, well, I just want to say that registration has officially begun.

Check out the DooF-a-Palooza landing page at:

www.foodbackwards.com/doof-a-palooza/2008

where you can

• read more about some of the key events we have lined up so far
• purchase tickets
• volunteer
• see some of our sponsors

We hope you’re as excited about DooF-a-Palooza as we are.

Stay tuned for more updates!

When we started DooF a few years ago, it already felt like an overdue response to the barrage of fast-food advertising and rapidly accelerating rates of childhood obesity. Corporations, schools, health care providers and government agencies were all getting on board with initiatives to address this critical health issue. Yet none of it seems to have worked. A recent review by the Associated Press of 57 federal programs to promote healthy eating in schools found mostly failure. Click to see the USA Today article

The programs brought fresh, healthy food into schools, where previously burgers, candy, soda and vending machines covered all of the ‘basic’ food needs. When the choice was made for them, the kids ate the healthy food, but once the adults turned their backs, the kids went back to the food they knew and loved. The reason is obvious. Fast food is fun! Healthy food…not fun.

Of course we know different. Healthy food IS fun, but it doesn’t do a very good job of advertising that fact. One of the points of the article was the advertising that bombards children on a daily basis. And it’s true — the fast food industry uses everything at its disposal–tie-ins, packaging, animated characters, product associations, television airtime, and pure entertainment–to make sure kids get their message.

Which is exactly what we want to do with DooF, only with a few more tricks up our sleeve. We know that the magic of growing, picking, preparing, and cooking good food makes for very entertaining TV. Putting this all in a package that’s fun and credible for kids is a challenge we relish.

And as if we didn’t know already, we got even more confirmation in 2007 that we’re on the right track. In October we brought FoodBackwards magic to nearly a thousand people with our first ever DooF-a-Palooza at Google. The event featured hands-on food activities with the kind of growers, chefs, and purveyors we feature on DooF.

Right now, it looks like we’re on track to produce thirteen new episodes of DooF in 2008 (more on this in a future post). So DooF and DooF characters will be coming to a television near you, this website, an electronic game, and a host of other merchandise, along with those beautifully packaged items–apples, oranges, grapes, pears, potatoes, etc.

We’re betting that more kids will choose these items, at school and at home, once they’ve seen how much fun it is to discover and prepare good food themselves…on TV, that is.