Whilst in the primary school sector alone, this decrease in meal uptake is slowing, only 40% of pupils in this age range, receive a daily hot and nutritious meal at lunchtime. As school caterers know, to turn this tide and increase interest, meals not only have to couple nutrition and taste appeal for children, but also be delivered with consideration to budgets, staff expertise, equipment and logistics. This can be a tall order as primary schools continue to juggle nutritional guidelines with often limited resources.
To fully appreciate this complex issue of primary school catering, apetito conducted 18 months research prior to the introduction of its own bespoke cook-freeze solution, to ensure the system meets the needs of both caterers and pupils.
A key finding borne out of the research was the high prevalence of primary schools without onsite catering facilities. Discussions with 18 local authorities highlighted that this applied to 67% of schools in each respective area, with nearly three quarters of respondents believing it is unrealistic for all schools to introduce a total onsite meal provision. Considering the purchase of kitchen equipment is not only costly, but add to this training and staffing costs, it is evident a solution to this is the introduction of a prepared meal option as an alternative to catering from scratch on site.
With this in mind, all meals within the new apetito range developed specifically for primary schools are in a cook freeze format. The ability to freeze nutrition into a meal at the point of preparation and simply heat when required, not only ensures quality and nutritional levels of each dish are guaranteed but also helps to control overall costs. For schools with limited or no catering facilities, caterers simply require freezers and suitable heating equipment such as conventional ovens or regeneration trolleys to introduce or implement a convenient, nutritional and workable catering solution.
Each apetito meal has been developed for use as part of a balanced school lunch menu and in accordance with the guidelines of the School Food Trust and to support the government's nutrient based standards for school lunches to be introduced in primary schools by September 2008. As a result, school caterers are assured their pupils receive nutritional balanced meals each day, without the need to assess recipes for nutritive value on a daily basis.
All 26 apetito main meals and 10 vegetarian options were developed for pupils, with pupils and are free from hydrogenated fats, artificial colours and flavours and contain no added MSG.
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