Education and learning

National Nutritional Standards

What are the Government Nutritional Standards?

The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) have established nutritional guidelines for school meals that all school caterers are required to meet. These guidelines detail the frequency and occurrence certain foods and food groups should feature on the menu. These guidelines are currently under revision.

The current standards for school lunches are as follows:

Primary School

The standards say that lunches for primary school pupils must contain at least ONE item from each of the following food groups.

• Starchy foods such as bread, potatoes, rice and pasta. Starchy foods cooked in oil or fat should not be served more than 3 TIMES a week.
• Fruit and a vegetable must be available EVERYDAY. Fruit based desserts must be available TWICE a week.
• Milk and dairy foods.
• Meat, fish and alternative sources of protein. Red meat must be served at least TWICE a week. Fish must be served at least ONCE a week.

Secondary School

The standards require that at least TWO items from each of the following food groups must be available everyday and throughout the lunch service.

• Starchy foods such as bread, potatoes, rice and pasta. At least one of the foods available in this group should NOT be cooked in oil or fat. (For example, if one option is roast potatoes, another option could be boiled rice).
• Vegetables and fruit
• Milk and dairy foods
• Meat, fish and alternative (non-dairy) sources of protein. Red meat must be served at least THREE times a week. Fish must be served at least TWICE a week.

Further information can be found on the DfES website

What are the Caroline Walker Trust Guidelines?

The Caroline Walker Trust is a charitable organisation that was named after a famous nutritionist who died in 1988. They are concerned with nutritionally vulnerable groups of the population such as children and the elderly.

They have established voluntary, strict guidelines for school meals that provide quantities of a number of essential nutrients for children such as zinc, calcium, energy and carbohydrate. These quantities are based on how much a school meal should provide of the total daily requirement. These guidelines are based over a weekly period for children aged between 5 and 11 years.

It is identified that a number of nutrients should not be consumed in excess:

• Fat
• Saturated Fat
• Sodium
• Extrinsic Sugar (sugar not found naturally in food)

For these nutrients a maximum quantity for the meal is provided.

The Trust recently revised their guidelines and increased the requirement of a number of nutrients.

As from September 2006 the new food standards will apply. This will be supplemented by further recommendations including nutrient standards. Primary schools are to achieve the new standards by 2008 and all secondary schools by 2009.

The food standards are as follows:

Fruit and Vegetables	Not less than 2 portions per day per child, at least one of which should be salad or vegetables, and at least one of which should be fruit.
Oily Fish	On the school menu at least once every 3 weeks.
Deep Fried Products	Meals should not contain more than 2 deep fried products in a single week.
Processed Foods	Should not be reformed/reconstituted foods made from ‘meat slurry’.
Bread (without spread)	Available unrestricted throughout lunch.
Confectionery and Savoury Snacks	Not available through school lunches
Salt/Highly Salted Condiments	Not available at lunch tables or at the service counter
Drinks	The only drinks available should be water (still or fizzy), skimmed or semi skimmed milk, pure fruit juices, yogurt and milk drinks with less than 10% added sugar, or combinations of these (e.g. smoothies)
Water	Easy access to free, fresh, chilled drinking water.

We are pleased to report that the current menu not only achieves the food standards, but in some cases also meets and exceeds the nutrient standards due to be mandatory from 2008. This will be continued in future menus for schools in the central contract.

Contact Details

Contact name

School Catering Service

Telephone

020 8760 5467

Email

allyson.lloyd@croydon.gov.uk

Address

London Borough of Croydon
Taberner House
Croydon
CR9 1TP