The mountain of sugar is surrounded by sugar sculptures of kids, created with sixty-four pounds of sugar each. The average eight-year-old consumes that much sugar in one year.
Erected in the middle of the night on August 22, the installation certainly made a statement. The American Heart Association recommends children consume about 100 calories (25 grams) of sugar each day, while KIND estimates that the average nine-year-old eats their weight in sugar every year.
The installation was designed to promote KIND’s new Fruit Bites, which mark the brand’s first move into the fruit snack category. Having already disrupted the norm in other snack categories known for minimal nutrition, such as breakfast bars, KIND is off to a notable start for their newest venture in healthy snacks. The new Fruit Bites are the first of their kind to be made with only fruit and with no added sugar. True to the brand image, the packaging proudly displays the ingredients of each flavor - five cherries and half an apple goes into the cherry apple flavored fruit bites. Each pouch comes packed with one full serving of fruit.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that more than 40 percent of a child’s daily caloric intake is made up of empty calories from added sugars and solid fats. And although there has been an increase in the amount of fruits and vegetables consumed by children ages 2 to 18 years in the last decade, there is still a long way to go towards eliminating the excess added sugars in snacks and other foods. According to an interview with USA Today, KIND Health & Wellness Specialist, Stephanie Perruzza, R.D., hopes that this promotion for the brand’s new Fruit Bites will encourage parents to make more informed decisions regarding what they are feeding their children.
With 98 percent of users feeling an inclination to purchase a product after attending an event, such as this one, they are off to a great start with this experiential installation. In addition to KIND’s own outreach for the event, which included brand representatives in Times Square providing free Fruit Bites and branded flyers, as well as social media promotion on their own channels, it can be expected that a minimum of one-third of the passersby of this installation were taking photos or videos for their own social media channels.
Check out a video of the construction of the sugar mound on the KIND YouTube channel here.
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