In this essay, I aim to explore the introduction of food to children, with a specific lens on gender and disordered eating. While watching School of Rock, I was captivated by the scene where Dewey Finn, the teacher, talks to one of his students about fatness, loving to eat, and being confident in one’s body. This prompted me to start thinking about how food is introduced to young children, since they’re at such a prime age for socialization. Then, I thought back to one of the most renowned bands aimed towards a young audience… The Wiggles! I am intrigued by “Fruit Salad Yummy Yummy”. This song and music video do a mostly good job of teaching children important skills like cooking and cleaning.
The Wiggles are a colorful band with some awesome beats that are overall enticing to particularly kids, but 20-year olds like me as well. I, along with many that grew up with them, are drawn to the entertainment and education that they provide. While listening to a catchy harmony, you can also learn about different topics such as friendship, play, and cooking! The lyrics tend to be straightforward and follow a chronological order which makes the topic much more easily consumable and understandable. The visuals are dream-like and fascinating, with doodles as backgrounds, dancing, and multiple colors. Their song, “Fruit Salad Yummy Yummy” falls very in line with this. The song follows the steps of making a fruit salad, eating it, and cleaning up afterwards and the music video depicts 5 men dressed as chefs, preparing a fruit salad around a table.
The song contains messaging that I think is very positive for kids’ perception of taste and eating. It has messages like “Take all the fruit that you want to eat”. This message stands out because it promotes eating in an intuitive way, which means eating as much as one’s body wants. In media, there are a lot of messages around eating that emphasize eating smaller amounts to remain under calorie counts or increasing metabolism. So, I appreciate that this song encourages eating as much as you want! This is an important message for kids to get from a young age. Eating is good, it’s necessary, it’s yummy yummy.
The upbeatness of this song brings a fun mood to the event of food consumption. At an age when food can be dreadful to eat or even think about, I think it’s very necessary to bring fun and play into food time. Seeing the bright colors, dancing and singing along, and having visual representations of food being made and tasting yummy can also alter a child’s perception of food. It can make food consumption a more enjoyable experience and possibly enhance taste. The fruit in the video is displayed in vast, colorful quantities spread throughout the table. Some of the fruit has already been cut up and added to a salad in a bowl while other fruits remain whole and untouched. I believe that displaying the food in this way is appealing to children because it replicates a kind of garden of play, with seemingly endless fruit textures, shapes, and tastes.
In regards to taste, The Wiggles, for the most part, aren’t seen eating the actual fruit, but are still able to depict that the fruit salad is savory. At one point, the red Wiggle eats a grape and he reacts by lifting his shoulders to his ears with a big smile, showing a kind of joy that comes from eating the fruit. This is the only time the men are seen eating. However, in accompaniment with the lyrics “Fruit Salad. Yummy. Yummy”, the men make a motion of scooping food from a bowl into their mouths and then rubbing their abdomen with smiles. Although the food isn’t literally being eaten, it does evoke a sense of good taste and enjoyment.
In addition, I believe that the inclusion of 5 men cooking and promoting cleaning after themselves is important for young children to see, especially young boys. It can help destigmatize male participation in acts considered to be primarily for women, and, in fact, encourage it. The men are seen having fun together while they cook and sing about cleaning up afterwards. This frames cooking as a fun, communal activity that is worth taking part in, regardless of gender. In my experience as a previously young child, watching an overwhelming amount of shows and movies where femmes were always placed in a position of domesticity led me to believe that that was the inherent nature of people like me. It wasn’t until I was a teen when I was more and more exposed to media where women were portrayed beyond the traditional patriarchal depictions. This is partly when my mindset and perception of myself and my roles began to shift. Because of this experience, I believe that the aforementioned message and depiction of this song and music video by The Wiggles can be crucial to removing gender from chores like cleaning up.
Although I appreciate The Wiggles’ “Fruit Salad Yummy Yummy”, I think that there is nuance to this conversation. It’s important to acknowledge that this song is geared towards a very young audience. This prevents the song from having much sophistication in their message because they have to keep their lyrics simple. Due to that, this pop cultural artifact can’t necessarily do the best job of providing nuance to the conversation around patriarchal domesticity and disordered eating that many people above the age of seven may crave. However, I think that this song remains a good conversation starter around food and preparing it, at least for children.
Overall, “Fruit Salad Yummy Yummy” has been really helpful for me in better understanding food and taste because it considers a young audience which is where a lot of taste is developed. It’s fascinating to note how much information a child will absorb, including simple messages in a song about fruit salad. These messages, although simple-seeming, can have an immense impact on the way a child develops taste and a relationship with food. If a child’s idols are raving about fruit salads, the child may grow to adore that food. Beyond this development of taste, perceiving food as fun and a good thing to consume can help a child develop a good relationship with food. Their perception of food and food quantities may be more positive, as opposed to a child who is bombarded with diet culture in media. The same goes when it comes to the preparation and clean-up of food and cooking. “Fruit Salad Yummy Yummy” by the Wiggles is an essential pop cultural artifact that can play a big role in children’s moods towards food and their life-long relationship to it and it deserves all of its praise.
Stephanie Mata Granados OC ’26 is passionate about creamy soups, spicy chips, and a really good BLT sandwich. They enjoy sous-chefing and are ecstatic to cook more in their life!
