Dear Parents and Carers,

We are currently working towards our Healthy School’s Bronze award and have made some changes to our Whole School Food policy.  I have provided key information from the policy below.

Snacks: Fruit/vegetables 

All students are encouraged to eat 5 portions of fruit/vegetables a day. All students are entitled to the Universal Infant Free School Meal each day. We will encourage healthy lunches through our teaching, our parents evenings and meetings, our publications to parents and via our website. A salad bar and a choice of fresh fruit for pudding are available each day.  All students will be offered a piece of fruit/vegetable daily as part of the Fruit in School campaign.  Children across the school can also bring in their own piece of fruit or vegetables for morning break time. Children may also bring in raisins but yogurt covered raisins and fruit winders are not suitable snacks for break time.

School Meals

School meals are provided by The Contact Dining Company. School meal menus are planned on a two-week cycle and are updated twice a year. We encourage and promote uptake of salad, fruit and vegetables always to all pupils. Salad is available from our salad bar.

Packed Lunches

We understand that not all children opt to have a school meal and prefer to bring a packed lunch from home. However, we ask that packed lunches from home are healthy and adhere to these guidelines. If your child has a medical need or allergy and requires a special diet, please discuss with your child’s class teacher.

The recommended contents of a healthy lunch box are:

• Fruit and Vegetables; at least two portions of fruit or vegetables every day (a portion is the amount your child can fit into the palm of their hand). This could be fresh, dried or tinned fruit
• Carbohydrate; a starchy food every day such as bread, pasta, rice, couscous, noodles, potatoes, chapatis/roti, plain crackers, breadsticks, rice cakes
• Protein; meat, egg or other source of non-dairy protein such as lentils, kidney beans, chickpeas, hummus, dhal, falafel
• Oily fish; tinned or fresh mackerel, sardines, salmon or tuna should be included at least once every three weeks
• Dairy; every day such as milk, cheese, yoghurt, fromage-frais, custard or calcium fortified soya products
• Drinks; (with no added sugar) such as pure fruit juice, semi-skimmed/skimmed milk, milk-based or yoghurt-based drinks, fruit smoothies
• Dessert/pudding; such as a small cake, biscuit, cereal bar, fruit loaf/bun OR scotch pancake as part of a balanced meal. Please look carefully at packaging as many items that may look healthy can have high levels of sugar and fat. Look for those with 100 calories or less per portion and only include one-a-day for lunch.

BANNED ITEMS - Packed Lunches should not include:

• Sweets/confectionery/chewing gum
• Chocolate bars / chocolate coated biscuits
• Fizzy or sugary drinks, or energy drinks
• Crisps (A standard sized bag of crisps of around 25g will be allowed as an accompaniment for a couple of times a week)
• No more than one dessert item per day (cake, biscuit, cereal bar)
• Precooked fast food types such as cold burgers and fries
• Sauces including brown sauce or ketchup

Due to food allergies any products containing nuts are prohibited from school packed lunches (including peanut butter and Nutella) because of the life-threatening risk it can cause to children who may have a severe allergy.

Whole School Celebrations

From a social and cultural perspective, there will be times when it is appropriate for the whole school to celebrate special occasions together by sharing confectionery or class party food. Examples of these times may be Easter or Christmas etc. As part of a balanced diet, children are allowed to hand out sweets to their class to celebrate their birthday. We ask this be wrapped fun size bags of sweets.  Children will not be allowed to give out cakes or party bags.

A full copy of our policy can be found on our website.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Joseph Pomeroy

Headteacher