V&A's Edible Exhibition Lets Kids Play With Food

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Getting kids to try new food can be a nightmare - just ask any parent who has capitulated to a diet of Coco-Pops and cheesy pasta rather than let their fussy little eater starve. 

And there's a good reason behind the stubbornness - children have around 30,000 taste buds compared to adults, which makes trying new foods an intense, and sometimes unpleasant experience. No wonder that only 8% of children in the UK eat their recommended five-portions-a-day of fruit and veg.

But a fun culinary exhibition held at London's V&A Museum of Childhood last week aims to change all that. Created by AMV BBDO, and billed as 'the world’s first interactive edible exhibition' the experiential campaign encouraged children to play and experiment with their food - a process that makes them more likely to try and accept different tastes. 

To create the comestible exhibits, the agency decided to tap into their audience's imaginations, with over 100 children given the chance to invent their ultimate food fantasies at a free workshop.

Six winning designs were turned into delicious reality with the help of food wizards Bompas & Parr - who hit the headlines last year for their breathable gin-and-tonic installation. Thankfully, alcohol was entirely absent from their fruit-and-veg creations this time round, which included glow-in-the-dark ice cream made from carrots, edible broccoli bubbles, a 'parsnip tornado' and the exciting-looking pineapple cloud, pictured below. 

Blink Art illustrator Rob Flowers helped promote the event with a series of edible posters and invitations, each with its own unique flavour. Every aspect of the printing process, from the edible paper to the multi-flavored inks, was custom-made for the exhibition in collaboration with Bompas & Parr. 

Although the exhibition is now over and every last crumb has been gobbled up, you can see how the process went down in the case study video, below.