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Nutritional Guidelines 5 years on

Nutritional Guidelines 5 years on. Helen Crawley Centre for Food Policy. Guidelines – and standards. Since 2009, mandatory food and nutrient based standards have been in place in all state schools in England.

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Nutritional Guidelines 5 years on

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  1. Nutritional Guidelines 5 years on Helen Crawley Centre for Food Policy

  2. Guidelines – and standards • Since 2009, mandatory food and nutrient based standards have been in place in all state schools in England. • This is a significant achievement: and one which we hope will lead to significant health gains over time. • Guidelines however includes all the wider issues around school food – many of which were discussed in 2005 at the School Meal Review Panel – and many of these issues are also being tackled now.

  3. So what really matters 5 years on? • That everyone remains convinced that promoting school meals for all is essential • That we move the wider agenda forward • That we consider some of the things we would be debating if the school meal review panel was meeting in 2010

  4. New NDNS data • Just 7 per cent of girls between the ages of 11 and 18 ate 5 or more portions of fruit and vegetables, while more than two in five girls of this age group did not consume enough iron, magnesium and other key nutrients and had low intakes of dairy foods • Teenagers are consuming too much saturated fat and sugar: 16.3% energy for boys and 15% for girls aged 11 to 18 compared to a dietary reference value of 11% energy • More than a third of teenage girls were overweight and a fifth obese.

  5. RNI New Standards

  6. X X X RNI New Standards

  7. Not just school meals • Improving school meals will go some way to improving ‘average’ intakes of nutrients – even in the best case scenario we need change outside school as well

  8. Do school meals make a difference? • The health gains that better school meals could make were calculated theoretically for the school meal review panel • It is early days for evaluation of the impact of school meals – early small studies suggest that children having a school meal eat significantly better than those having a packed lunch • The wider social implications of children and young people experiencing good practice at school, hearing about the importance of food in school and its new importance as a measurable standard in schools should also not be underestimated

  9. How do we move forward? • Numbers matter – the more children and young people that eat school meals, the more viable the service, the more school cooks are needed (and hopefully valued and trained), the greater profile food has in school and the more likely it is that other children will join in. • What we could do with is ……..

  10. Why has the £75million Change4life campaign not promoted the importance of school meals? Parents should be encouraged in all Government campaigns to see school food as an easy opportunity to meet eating well advice – and get this information from when children are very small Joined up policy

  11. Incentives for poorer families • There has been a rise in the threshold for free school meals and more children are now eligible – this is good – but more needs to be done to look at food poverty and how schools can support children who may go hungry at home. • Other measures could be considered for families on lower incomes who do not qualify for FSM (and who might find the price prohibitive for multiple children) such as sibling reductions, ‘loyalty cards’ giving 1 free meal for every 10 purchased.

  12. Bringing nutrient and food standards into early years is vital if we are to ensure that children start school with good food experiences, and food is taken seriously by families from when children are young. The process of preparing recommendations has now started – and it would be an enormous boost for school food if nurseries and children’s centres could learn from their expertise. Early Years Standards

  13. And if the school meals review panel was meeting now – what might we be debating? • Ecological Public Health – in this case linking nutrition policy with sustainability – is now on the agenda. • Would we still have a recommendation that oil rich fish should be on the menu with a crisis in fish stocks worldwide? • Would we be more specific about meat free days in the school meal menu or reduce the use of dairy foods? • Would we consider some of the wider issues around food procurement, seasonality of fruit and vegetables, reduction in transport costs, more efficient cooking methods?

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