IT WILL come as no surprise to most parents that the sight of grains and seeds in bread is a turn-off for most kids.

Apparently, they like it smooth and white.

For an almost 50-year-old with no kids, this is shocking stuff.

Husks on grains, seeds and plenty of texture are, to me, a dietary delight: the browner and grainer the loaf, the better.

Clearly I'm the wrong person to pitch grains to kids.

Getting kids to do the pitching makes lots of sense.

A group of teachers in NSW schools has done exactly this, asking primary students to design a campaign to promote grain as a dietary must-have for kids in the Go4Grains Kids Design Challenge.

At secondary level, students entering the challenge could design or modify a food containing grains, to sell at their school canteen.

For the teachers, the challenge encourages learning; the kids have a purpose and need to research, interview dieticians, and farmers (maybe) and then create something.

For co-sponsors, the Grains Council of Australia, it meant enlisting, potentially, the entire school population of NSW as co-promoters.

It's a great idea, because to pitch a food successfully you have to know what the food is, how it's made, where it comes from and what's in it.

To make the food a hit at the school canteen, kids had to know how it tastes to other kids.

They had to do all this all while meeting the challenge's health requirements that encourage the consumption of at least four serves of grain a day.

Twenty-one year eight kids at Finley High School in NSW, many who are from farms and have been party to the annual angst-fest known as cropping season their entire lives, took part in the challenge.

One of the first things they discovered when asking their peers and fellow students about what might entice them to eat a grain food was for it not to look like grain. Hiding it or disguising it was a good tactic.

Food technology teacher Margaret Rowe, a dairy farmer from nearby Blighty, says the challenge encouraged the kids to find out a whole lot more about the grains that (in a good year) fund their livelihoods.

The kids couldn't get to Sydney for the final of the state-wide competition so they held their own.

They cooked recipes they'd modified to contain at least two grains.

Ashlee Garlick clinched the prize with spiced apple dessert buttermilk scones, containing self-raising flour, wheat bran and rice flour, and definitely no lumpy seeds.

State-wide, Cabramatta Public School, in Sydney's western suburbs, won the primary school Go4Grains "pitch with impact" award, with an animation ad featuring Bob Bran, who wins iron-man competitions thanks to his grain intake.

In the three years since it began, the challenge has grown to include 1932 students, up from 1025 in 2008.

Curiously, it's most popular in city schools.

Just five primary and five secondary schools in country areas entered, yet Marg Rowe says it's a wonderful program, with good teaching materials and professional development provided for the teachers and schools (by video-conferencing if needed) that take it up.

Maybe country kids are over the grain scene surrounding them.

Maybe they just want to get to the big smoke. At least then it'll be cool to eat brown bread, lumpy seeds and all.