Healthy Lunch
A healthy lunch is necessary for your child to maintain their energy and concentration levels throughout the afternoon classes. There are two options for lunch:
- School Dinners – are free of charge from September 2014 to all children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. For children in KS2 the cost is £2 per meal. There is a vegetarian or meat option for your child to choose from. Please inform staff of any additional dietary requirements such as allergies.
- Packed Lunches – we feel it is important that our children have a healthy packed lunch. Sandwiches should contain either meat, cheese, egg, salad or a spread such as Marmite or other sandwich spreads. Nutella, jam and other sugar based spreads are not encouraged. Pasties, sausage rolls and other such items are permitted. Please see the table below for some good ideas and alternatives to the norm.
Here are some ideas for how to include bread, rice, potatoes and pasta
Try all sorts of different breads including rolls, flatbreads, bagels and wraps.
REMEMBER; wholemeal and granary bread have a lot more goodness in them than white bread.
Couscous is very quick and easy to cook and also makes very good cold salads.
Rice salads can be really tasty and a good way of using up cooked rice (but remember to store cooked rice in the fridge and use a lunchbox that contains an icepack). Why not try mixing it up with vegetables, chopped fruit, raisins etc?
Have you tried potato salad in your lunchbox? Cooked potatoes mixed with mayonnaise, yoghurt and herbs are delicious. You might also want to add cooked meat like chopped ham or chicken.
Cold pizza slices can be a great addition to a lunchbox. Even better if they are homemade pizza slices so you can control the amount of fat and salt.
Useful websites
These website have some great ideas for healthy lunchboxes.
http://www.raisingkids.co.uk/food/fea106_packedlunches.asp
http://www.netmums.com/food/Lunchbox_Ideas.101/
Crisps and packet savoury snacks
These will only be allowed on a Friday.
Items such as rice cakes are allowed but a small helping, not a whole packet.
Drinks
It is really important that you drink lots of water to keep you healthy.
- Plain (unflavoured/ unsweetened/ still) water.
- A small carton of pure / diluted fruit juice.
- A small carton of milk.
- Sugar free fruit juice
Cakes and biscuits
As part of a balanced meal we allow one sweet biscuit/cake per day in your healthy lunchbox.
Fruit
A healthy packed lunch should contain at least one piece of fresh fruit. Dried fruit is also fine but please check that it does not contain added sugar. Yoghurts are also allowed but try to keep them plain or fruit based.
Playtime snacks
All children in Key Stage 1 are entitled to free fruit which is provided by the local authority. KS1 children are allowed to bring an additional snack and Key Stage 2 children their own snack from the list below:
- A healthy snack bar e.g. Muesli or cereal bar.
- Bread sticks or plain rice cakes.
- Piece of fruit or dried fruit.
Biscuits, crisps, savoury crackers and packet snacks should not be included as a snack.
Remember on Mondays and Tuesdays we sell fruit juice for 25p and breadsticks for 30p at break time.
