Setting The Standard – Why Nurseries Need To Establish A Good Food And Nutrition Policy
To ensure your menu is consistently outstanding, you need a robust food and nutrition policy, says Nigel Denby…
- by Nigel Denby
Nutrition training is vital, but to be effective it needs to be backed up by robust written guidance and evidence. There has to be a central point for staff and managers to refer to as a refresher or to confirm what their policy on specific aspect of food actually is. This is where a food and nutrition policy comes into its own. It’s the baseline, the marker of the standards your organisation aims for. Managers can use a good food and nutrition policy to manage their chefs and practitioners. Staff can use the policy to update their knowledge and identify gaps in their skills. And nowadays, inspectors can use a policy document to measure your organisation’s intention and commitment to meet defined standards.
In short, your policy has to fulfil many briefs and be many things to many people. It can seem a tall order if the task of writing a food and nutrition policy falls into your lap! So here’s my guide to writing a food and nutrition policy. You may have come across the principles of SMART working or SMART goals before – we find them particularly useful. SMART working is all about keeping information Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-specific.
If you apply these principles to your food and nutrition policy, you won’t go far wrong…
Be SPECIFIC
It’s all well and good claiming that you regularly serve fish, or that your menus are ‘nutritious’ or ‘low in salt’, but this is all meaningless unless you get very specific about what you really do. So if you serve fish on the menu, how often? What quantity? What type of fish – oily or white? Are children being served the recommended amount? Similarly, how do you know your menu is low in salt? Are you being specific about which ingredients you’re choosing to keep salt levels low? It’s not enough to state that you don’t add salt to your recipes because that doesn’t mean your menu is going to be low in salt (75% of salt in our diet comes from the salt added to pre-prepared foods).
You need to identify salty ingredients like stock cubes, seasonings, sauces, bread and baked goods, canned fish in brine, cheese and processed meats – and then state the brands or varieties you are using that are lowest in salt. ‘Nutritious’ is a widely overused term and open to misinterpretation. Your version of ‘nutritious’ will be different from the next person’s, so unless you can demonstrate how nutritious your menu is, don’t say it!
We know the nutritional needs of young children and can pinpoint them down to the amount of individual vitamins and minerals they need every day; you need to know the contribution your menu makes to those needs before you can say it’s nutritious. To assess how nutritious your menu is, you’ll need standard recipes that produce a specific yield (number of portions). This will also enable you to state that your menu provides X% of a child’s requirement for calcium or a certain number of servings of fruit and vegetables every day (a child’s serving of fruit or veg is 40g, so your menu needs to provide 200g from at least five different sources a day to make five servings).
Keep it MEASURABLE
To get specific you’ll need to be able to measure some elements of your menu: nutritional value, weights, portion sizes, etc. This is why the standard recipe is vital.
Most chefs are very skilled at retaining recipes in their head and guessing quantities needed to make dishes, but while this is impressive, it is not appropriate in early years settings. Recipes must be documented, standardised and quantified, otherwise you have no standard. By producing a menu you can also see how often you serve oily and white fish, red meat, dairy foods, etc. These measures enable you to check that you are meeting food-based guidelines (Eat Better, Start Better) for children in childcare, as well as nutrient-based standards laid down by organisations such as The Caroline Walker Trust.
Is it ACHIEVABLE?
We’d all love to serve mushrooms freshly gathered from the fields with the morning dew still on them. You might want to serve organic ingredients or locally sourced produce.
The reality is that you can do a bit of all of these things, but it’s highly unlikely that you can serve all home-produced ingredients or source only organic or local ingredients. In fact, trying to stick to a universal, ethical or environmental food claim can have a very negative impact on the nutritional value of your menu.
It’s incredibly difficult to source organic fish, for instance, and organic breakfast cereals are not fortified with vitamins and minerals, which can impact the iron status of children at risk of iron deficiency anaemia. Similarly, only serving locally sourced food will limit your menu significantly. You must ensure that any ethical/environmental element to your food policy is achievable and works to ensure the best possible nutritional opportunities for your children. By all means, use some organic produce and work with local suppliers, and most definitely try to grow some vegetables with the children – but don’t base your entire food policy on these principles.
Stay REALISTIC
If you want to take pride in the food you serve being home-cooked, you need to work closely with your chef. Is the kitchen adequately equipped? Does he/she have enough time to make everything from scratch?
Your chef must be involved in the whole menu planning exercise, and also in pulling together your policy. He or she can work with you to keep your commitments achievable and realistic.
TIME-SPECIFIC
Getting your food and nutrition policy up to the same standard as your education, play or child safety policy can seem a big leap for many settings. Nutrition training is not routinely provided for early years practitioners, managers or, for that matter, chefs, so it’s little wonder so many food policies are a long way from being SMART.
If you review your food and nutrition offer and realise you need to improve, set manageable time-frames to make improvements, stagger them and measure as you go to see that you’re on target.
Nigel Denby is a registered dietician and founder of Grub4Life; for more information, visit grub4life.org.uk or follow @GDAGuru
