Policy 6.5 Food and Drink

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Policy statement

We regard snack and meal times as an important part of our day here at The Learning Meadow. Eating represents a social time for children and adults and helps children to learn about healthy eating. We promote healthy eating. At snack and meal times, we aim to provide nutritious food, which meets the children's individual dietary needs.

 

Procedures

We follow these procedures to promote healthy eating in our setting.

• Before a child starts to attend the setting, we ask their parents about their dietary needs and preferences, including any allergies. (See the Managing Children who are Sick, Infectious or with Allergies Policy.)

• Parents complete information about each child's dietary needs on the Registration Form on ey log and the all about me forms.

• A child’s form must be completed before they start their settling in session.

• We regularly consult with parents to ensure that our records of their children's dietary needs – including any allergies - are up to date.

• We display current information about individual children's dietary needs in our kitchen and our snack boxes so that all our staff and volunteers are fully informed about them. Our staff also sign to say they are aware of all allergies.

• All staff serving food are food and hygiene trained.

• Staff:child ratio remains the same during the lunch period and all children must be eating within sight and sound of an adult.

• We implement systems to ensure that children receive only food and drink that is consistent with their dietary needs and preferences, as well as their parents' wishes.

• Any child with an allergy or food intolerance has a different coloured plate and cup so that staff are immediately alerted to an allergy or food intolerance.

• We do not serve food that would be classed as a choking hazard and take steps to ensure that any food at risk of this is prepared to reduce the risk e.g cherry tomatoes are cut in half

• There must be two staff present at all times while children are eating.

• We display, at the end of each session on our information board, the information regarding breakfast and snack menus for parents to view.

• We record for the parents how much a child has eaten at breakfast and lunchtimes.

• We display our menus of the food provided by Warminster School on the parents notice board.

• We encourage all children to try all elements of their lunch before they are able to help themselves to a sweet pudding, yoghurt or fruit.

• We provide nutritious food for all meals and snacks, avoiding large quantities of saturated fat, sugar and salt and artificial additives, preservatives and colourings.

• We include foods from the diet of each of the children's cultural backgrounds, providing children with familiar foods and introducing them to new ones.

• We do not knowingly provide food containing nuts or nut products and we are especially vigilant where we have a child who has a known allergy to nuts.

• Through discussion with parents and research reading, we obtain information about the dietary rules of the religious groups to which children and their parents belong, and of vegetarians and vegans, as well as about food allergies. We take account of this information in the provision of food and drinks.

• We provide a vegetarian alternative on days when meat or fish are offered and make every effort to ensure Halal meat or Kosher food is available for children who require it.

• We organise meal and snack times so that they are social occasions in which children and adults participate.

• We use meal and snack times to help children to develop independence through making choices, serving food and drink, washing up and feeding themselves.

• We encourage children to set their own space with utensils that are appropriate for their ages and stages of development and that take account of the eating practices in their cultures.

• We have fresh drinking water constantly available for the children. We inform the children about how to obtain the water and that they can access water at any time during the day from our water jar or their own water bottles.

• In order to protect children with food allergies, we discourage children from sharing and swapping their food with one another.

• For all children we offer semi-skimmed milk.

 

Packed lunches

Where we cannot provide cooked meals and children are required to bring packed lunches, we:

• Ask parents to ensure perishable contents of packed lunches contain an ice pack to keep food cool;

• inform parents of our policy on healthy eating;

• inform parents of whether we have facilities to microwave cooked food brought from home;

• encourage parents to provide sandwiches with a healthy filling, fruit, and milk-based deserts, such as yoghurt or crème fraiche. We discourage sweet drinks and can provide children with water or milk.

• make parents aware of food that is a choking risk and ask them to cut them up i.e cherry tomatoes, mini sausages.

• discourage packed lunch contents that consist largely of crisps, processed foods, sweet drinks and sweet products such as cakes or biscuits. We reserve the right to return this food to the parent as a last resort;

• provide children bringing packed lunches with plates, cups and cutlery; and

• ensure that adults sit with children to eat their lunch so that the mealtime is a social occasion.

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This policy was initially adopted by The Learning Meadow in October 2018 and is reviewed annually 

Dawn Pirie (Owner/Manager)

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