School Food Standards: Not Just for Lunch

Dr Pamela L Graham

Department of Social Work, Education & Community Wellbeing

p.l.graham@northumbria.ac.uk @PamLGraham

‘Feed Me Better’

'Getting all the cheap, processed junk food out of schools and getting the dinner ladies cooking real food is going to help the kids across Britain and will save money in the long run as we won't be creating so many problems down the line for the NHS.’ (Jamie Oliver, 2005)

School Food Standards

• Built on previous standards introduced between 2006 and 2009

• “Designed to make it easier for school cooks to create imaginative, flexible and nutritious menus” (School Food Plan, 2013)

• 90% of school cooks thought the new standards were easier to understand and 80% thought they provided more flexibility (Mucavele et al., 2013)

School Food Standards Promote:

• Access to healthy, balanced meals throughout the school day

• Plenty of fruit, vegetables and unrefined starchy foods

• Some meat, fish, dairy, eggs, beans and non-dairy sources of protein

• Healthier drinks

• No confectionary or chocolate

• No additional salt and limited condiments

School Food Other Than Lunch

• Breakfast clubs, after school clubs, tuck shops and vending machines

• Must be balanced throughout the school day/week

• No savoury crackers or breadsticks

• No cakes, biscuits, pastries or desserts

Breakfast: Most Important Meal of the Day?

• Breakfast skipping can be detrimental (Defeyter & Russo, 2013; Huang et

al., 2010; Currie et al., 2010)

• Breakfast is most frequently skipped meal (Rampersaud, 2009)

• 85% schools provide breakfast (Kellogg’s, 2014)

What Difference Does Breakfast Club Make?

Semi-structured interviews & focus groups

9 primary schools

Children

Parents School staff

North East of England

North West of England

Chance to Try New Foods

“She won’t have apple juice at home but she’ll have it here you know so she does actually try different things here” (Quote from Parent)

Only Breakfast is School Breakfast

“For those that don’t get it at home yeah it’s brilliant because we’ve actually brought food in before now for children” (Quote from school staff member)

It’s Great! But…

• Additional sugar

• Chocolate spread, pastries, malt loaf

• Does everyone need it?

“If it’s not stamped on by people who are you know higher management in this school than me I’m not prepared to get into arguments with members of staff over it so that’s kind of where I

would back track” (Quote from staff member)

Why Does it Matter?

• 9.6% of reception children and 20% of year 6 children are obese (National Child Measurement Programme, 2017)

• High prevalence of tooth extraction amongst primary school children (Royal College of Surgeons, 2017)

• Childhood habits pave the way for adult health

Just Another Spoonful…

• ‘People come to prefer what they are used to’ (Connor & Armitage, 2002)

• Repeated taste exposures are important to the development of food preferences (Lakkakula et al., 2010)

Leading by Example

• Teacher and peer modelling can encourage positive food habits (Hendy & Raudenbush, 2000; Horne et al., 2004)

• Head teachers lead change

Conclusions

• Joined up approach to food is important- whole school, whole day, whole week

• School food can and should encourage positive eating habits

Looking Ahead

• Currently investigating knowledge of nutrition, portion size and food hygiene amongst school and community food service staff (Graham & Vijaykumar)

Thank you for listening

p.l.graham@northumbria.ac.uk