It is important that infants and children achieve a healthy and balanced diet. This is to ensure they get essential nutrients needed to meet the demands for growth and development. It is also important for the overall health and wellbeing of children.
Childhood obesity continues to be a national public health priority and early years settings play a crucial role in tackling this with the food and drinks they provide. The early years are a fundamental time to influence children’s food preferences as these are likely to continue into adulthood, giving children the best start at life.
Healthy eating guidelines in the UK are represented by The Eatwell Guide. This is a visual guide to a healthy and balanced diet. It is made up of 5 food groups and shows how much of each we should be aiming to eat over a day or a week. Between the ages of 2 and 5, children should gradually move to eating the same foods as the rest of the family in the proportions shown in the Eatwell Guide. The Eatwell Guide does not apply to children under the age of 2 because they have different nutritional needs.
The Startwell programme includes nutritionists who will provide nutritional support for early years settings. The Startwell Menu Guidelines are based on the Department of Education’s Early Years Foundation Stage Nutrition Guidance and have been tailored to meet the needs for children in Birmingham. The Startwell menu guidelines break the day down into each eating opportunity and explain what food groups need to be included at each meal and snack. We recognise that Birmingham consists of a number of deprived wards where families struggle to eat healthily, therefore, our guidelines will help to ensure children receive healthy and nutritious food whilst in the care of early years settings.
The Startwell Award criteria look at food and drink provided throughout the whole day (breakfast, lunch, tea and snacks), where applicable. Support is also provided for weaning menus and for those with specific dietary requirements e.g. vegetarian menus and children with food allergies and/or intolerances.
We encourage the active use of Startwell Characters during mealtimes by using flashcards as prompts. This is a valuable opportunity to teach the key messages from our food characters Fay 5 a day, Micky Me Size and 2 Snacks Max. Our role model character, Suzy Startwell can be used to talk about the importance of eating together and family meal times and our oral health character, Smiley Shen can be discussed by pointing out the calcium rich foods the children are eating to develop strong teeth. Talking about the Startwell messages and characters gives conversation at meal times a clear focus.
To help settings teach healthy eating to children and parents there are some electronic resources available to download. The resources available are:
- The Eatwell Guide Flyer – this is a flyer that you can display and share with parents.
- A Blank Eatwell Guide Handout – this is the Eatwell Guide but without the images of food. This can be used for cut and paste or drawing activities.
- A poster with Eatwell Guide Child Friendly Terminology – this can be displayed in your snack and dining area as a quick reference for practitioners to help them discuss foods that children are eating.
If you are an early years practitioner or an in-house chef and would like to learn more about how to develop healthy, balanced menus that children will enjoy, please book onto our food and mealtimes training, the details can be found our training section.
Partners
Facebook Posts
This is the launch of our 6 week Startwell summer holiday challenge. Please share the summer challenge with your families or complete together as a setting. The first week includes obstacle courses and eating a rainbow of fruit.
startwellbirmingham.co.uk