Food and Nutrition
  St Marks Pre-school wish to promote the right environment for our children to understand the importance of making healthy choices. Packed Lunches and Snacks represent at least a third of a child’s daily intake of food and nutrients, which presents a great opportunity to promote healthy food choices for our children.
Our aim is to: • To ensure all children receive a healthy, balanced, and varied diet during their time in the setting. • To support children in developing positive attitudes towards food and mealtimes. • To ensure safer eating. • To promote good hygiene practices and self-care around food and eating. • To respect cultural, religious, and dietary needs, including allergies and intolerances. • To engage families in promoting healthy eating both in the setting and at home.

Content of Packed Lunches The ‘Always, Sometimes, Never’ approach to Packed Lunches at St Marks Preschool.
Packed lunches should ‘Always’ include: • At least one portion of fruit and one portion of vegetables every day. Grapes and cherry tomatoes should be halved lengthways for preschool age children. • Meat, fish, eggs, or a non-dairy protein (e.g. lentils, kidney beans, chickpeas, houmous, falafel) every day. • Oily fish, such as salmon or tuna, at least once every three weeks. • A starchy food such as any type of bread (white or wholegrain rolls, pitta bread or wraps), pasta, rice, couscous, noodles, potatoes or another cereal every day. • A dairy food such as milk, ‘proper’ cheese (ie not Dairylea lunchables or similar), yoghurt, fromage frais or custard every day. • Pretzels, crackers and cheese. • Vegetable sticks and dips. •Water or milk Packed

Lunches can ‘Sometimes’ include: • A meat product such as a sausage roll or an individual pie or corned meat. •100% Fruit juice.
Packed lunches should ‘Never’ include: • Any confectionery such as chocolate bars, chocolate-coated biscuits and sweets. • Any crisps. • Any sugary soft drinks, such as a fizzy drink (even if labelled as ‘sugar-free’, ‘no- added sugar’ or ‘reduced sugar’ as these drinks can contribute to tooth decay and provide little nutritional value). •Squash or fruit drinks such as fruit shoots.

We understand it might be hard to fill your child's lunch box every day so we have put together some lunch box ideas below. We also take part in regular food tasting sessions so if we find your child shows a love for a certain food we will let you know so you can pop it into their lunch box or have it ready for a healthy snack at home! Here are some healthy lunch box ideas..