Education Today Education Today Magazine
Norse Commercial Services welcomed the new School Food Standards, introduced at the start of the 2015 spring term, and helped facilitate their launch in Norfolk at Costessey Junior School.
The new standards give school cooks greater freedom to create their own menus while also ensuring pupils get the energy and nutrients they need to help them grow, concentrate inside and outside the classroom and establish healthy eating habits for life.
The new standards set out a series of minimum requirements for all food served in schools to ensure children are eating high quality, varied nutritious meals.
Dr Patricia Mucavele, Head of Nutrition at the Children’s Food Trust, said:
“We at the Trust support the introduction of the new standards for school food and encourage all schools and their caterers to follow them, giving all children the opportunity to eat a healthy school lunch.
“We know from our research in schools that they provide an important opportunity to encourage children to eat a healthy diet, if children eat better, they do better.
“The new school food standards follow general public health eating guidance, encouraging schools to provide a wide range of foods across the week. Variety is key – for example the standards include the need to provide at least three different fruits and three different vegetables each week, offering a wider range of different foods provides a better balance of nutrients.
“The standards continue to restrict foods high in fat, sugar and salt, and the supporting practical guidance gives more advice about portion sizes and how to choose foods lower in fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt as well as how to interpret food labels.”
Terrance Isaac-Griffiths, Commercial Director in charge of catering services at Norse Commercial Services, said:
“At Norse, we are pursuing a cultural change that encourages everyone to have fun with food, and treat it as something that can be enjoyed by all. We adopt what we term a ‘whole school approach’, working with the head teachers to ensure that children engage with, and enjoy, great food.
“It’s very much a partnership, teaching children the benefits and importance of healthy and nutritious home-cooked food. Norfolk has an abundance of superb produce and, as a Silver Food for Life catering provider, we are very proud to work with a number of local suppliers and, in turn, support the local economy.
“We embrace the introduction of the new food standards as a tool to further highlight the importance of creating healthy balanced menus exposing the children we cook for the true benefit of a varied healthy diet to fuel them for leaning”.
Tony Hull, Principal at Costessey Junior School, commented:
“We think that lunch time is a really important part of the school day. We encourage our pupils to make healthy choices and teach them about the benefits of a healthy diet.
“Our school has a long association with Norse, and by signing up to the new standards today we believe that together we are really helping to promote the welfare of the young people in our care through the provision of well-balanced nutritious meals.”
Norse Commercial Services
280 Fifers Lane
Norwich
NR6 6EQ
Tel: 01603 894100
Email: info@ncsgrp.co.uk