How Teens Learn About Healthy Eating on Facebook

January 21 2010, 9:37am

Eating healthy just got a little bit cooler with ‘Blink” magazine, an online publication created by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in the UK and Dubit. Blink is part of a campaign to promote healthy living in teens aged 13 to 16. It is being hailed as the first online magazine to exist as a social networking application across Facebook. Dubit is a youth marketing and research agency. The FSA is an independent government department that works to protect the public’s health and consumer interest in relation to food. Blink content includes recipes, competitions, quizzes, personal healthy eating plans and user-generated content (UGC). There is a special section on the website where teens can write their own articles. Also appearing will be interviews with inspirational youth who have excelled in fields such as fashion, art, acting or sports. Blink presents itself as a publication that doesn’t force-feed teens information that they already know, such as, smoking is really bad for you. Instead it gives them useful information written in way they can relate to. “We are always looking for new ways to interact with young people. I hope that teenagers will be more willing to engage with our healthy eating advice when we communicate with them in an online environment,” said head of marketing at the Food Standards Agency, Kate Frankum.