Healthy Food, Healthy People

We all know how important it is to eat well, and as a school we want to do everything we can to make sure everyone is as healthy as possible.

Our first step was to make sure that everyone had a healthy snack at playtime. Now we all eat fruit or vegetables which are good for us and taste great!

Dashwood is part of the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme which provides free fruit and vegetables for all children up to Year 2, so now we can be sure that our youngest children are getting a portion of fruit or vegetable every day!

Next we made sure we are all getting enough water during the day. The Food Standards Agency recommends that everyone drinks around 1.5 litres of fluid every day (6-8 cups) and we do this by keeping a water bottle filled with fresh water by us all during the day. Our teachers don't just allow us to drink while we work - they expect it!

We also take part in the School Milk scheme which means that we can buy cartons of milk each day for us to drink at playtime. Now we have something to wash our fruit down with!

We had healthy lunchbox assemblies where we looked at what could be included in our lunchboxes.

We need to try to include something from each of the 5 main food groups each day. We have to try to avoid things with lots of salt or sugar as these are bad for us! So out go the crisps and in come the carrot sticks!

Here are some suggestions for things that might go into our healthy lunchboxes:

CARBOHYDRATES: a good portion of starchy food like a wholegrain bap or slices of wholemeal bread, or perhaps a chapatti or a pitta pocket. We could even include a small bowl of pasta or rice salad!

FRUIT AND VEGETABLES: perhaps an apple or satsuma, or maybe a handful of cherry tomatos or carrot sticks, or even a small carton of raisins or sultanas.

DAIRY: something like a yogurt or fromage frais, or perhaps some cheese sticks.

PROTEIN: like meat or fish in our sandwiches, or perhaps egg or hummus.

DRINK: a carton of juice or a bottle of water or maybe even a milk shake. But please, nothing with too much sugar in it!

Finally we need to think about how to keep our packed lunches fresh until lunchtime. At Dashwood we have trolleys outside our classrooms that we use to store our lunch until it's time to eat.

There are lots of ways we can make sure our lunches stay fresh until lunchtime. Here are a few ideas

* freeze cartons of juice so that they act as ice packs and keep food fresh.

* Make enough sandwiches for the week and then freeze them. Be careful though - some fillings won't freeze.

* Use a thermos flask to keep food hot or cold - you could even bring hot soup on very cold days.