It’s five years since The Grocer first ‘discovered’ EdStat, a children’s card game, based on Top Trumps, in which nutritional data about leading food and drink products is ‘trumped’.
Developed by enterprising pupils at a school in Yorkshire, we thought it was a great idea to engage more kids in the nutritional value and content of our leading food and drink brands - a lot more useful, with childhood obesity a growing national concern, than comparing the engine thrust of various fighter jet planes.
And our feature on the innovative card game won the backing of a host of food and drink suppliers, including Mars and Kellogg’s, while an introduction by The Grocer to Tesco’s CSR team promised to bring the game into national circulation - until, that is, the-then government launched an inquiry into the advertising of brands in schools, which put the kibosh on the project.
After various failed attempts to resurrect the idea using a watered down version of the game - in which well-known food and drink brands were replaced with blandly generic food and drink ‘types’ - a recent and welcome change in Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) rules means the card game can now be legally and viably circulated in schools. Legally, because the bald presentation of statistical information is rightly no longer considered advertising. And viably because the game relies on food and drink brands not only for sponsorship but to keep kids engaged.
I am confident that food and drink brands will once again sign up. And hats off to them if they do because the cards lay bare sometimes uncomfortable facts about their products.
Whether Tesco resurrects its interest in supporting this project is another matter. Five years on, it’s in a very different place, with a lot on its plate. And it’s doubtful whether it’s paying all that much attention to its CSR agenda. But I hope it does. And it certainly should.
Five years on, a card game that educates children on the relative values of food and drink is still a great idea. And when it comes to Tesco’s reputation, quite frankly, Every Little Helps.
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