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How to keep kids coming back for more school dinners

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How to keep kids coming back for more school dinners

As the debate around childhood obesity continues, recent research has revealed that only1% of packed lunches meet the same high nutritional standards as those set for school lunches. Fewer than 10% may be regarded as healthy, while sadly, as many as 40% of packed lunches are “shocking”, consisting of sugar, salt, dairy and fat.

Several organisations, including the Children’s Society, who recognise the role that healthy and nutritious school meals can play in tackling obesity and improving children’s health, are pushing for higher school meal take up.

As well as helping in the fight against obesity, a healthy, nutritional school lunch may have a significant impact upon concentration and behaviour – and perhaps a child’s ability to learn.

Since all children in years 1 and 2 now receive a free school meal there is a perfect opportunity to get them into the habit of eating a nutritious meal at lunch time.

School Dinners

But how do schools ensure that children eat up what’s been provided for them?

School dinners have come a long way since the days of lumpy custard, chewy meat and overcooked cabbage that some of us recall from our long ago school days; with school cooks working hard to develop interesting healthy meals that children will eat and enjoy.

As with any menu, variety is key. There’s no doubt that offering something different increases uptake. When one junior school recruited a new chef to offer restaurant style meals to its pupils – dishes that included lamb kofta and Scottish haddock and parsley pie – the uptake of school meals quadrupled within the year.

Promotion is also important. Creating a sense of excitement around what’s on the menu may encourage the pickiest of eaters to try something new. Even peer pressure may help where the cajoling of anxious parents has failed.

Special theme days have been proven to increase school meals uptake. With dining halls turned into an exciting and vibrant place, a competition idea taken up by every primary school one local education authority encouraged 20% more children to eat a nutritious school meal.

There’s no shortage of “awareness weeks” that can be tapped into to create special theme days in schools and encourage pupils to not only have school lunch, but to try something new.

National Rice Week, which takes place between the 19th and 26th September is an ideal opportunity to introduce several new and inexpensive savoury and sweet dishes to the pupils and there are  some great healthy and great value ideas to be found here (http://www.loverice.org/recipes/)

World Food Day, although Sunday 16th October and primarily a day of action against hunger offers a chance in the preceding week to focus on what children in other countries eat for lunch and to include these dishes on the menu.

Friday 14th October is World Egg Day and Friday 21st October is World Apple Day, and factoring in Hallowe’en and Thanksgiving (24th November – and pumpkin pie) should keep the ideas flowing for any school menu planner!

Once new dishes have been introduced and tried it’s a good idea to get engagement and feedback from the kids about what dishes they enjoyed most (or didn’t like at all) and the popular ones can be incorporated into regular menus.

For more information about the services we provide to schools please click here (https://www.totalfoodservice.co.uk/education.html)

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