Georgie Porgie

New report finds foods banned or restricted in primary and secondary schools - like chips, sweets and chocolate - are still regularly served in nurseries.
Some nurseries spend a pitiful 25p on food per child per day and there are no clear nutritional standards, particularly for state maintained nurseries.

Over 600,000 children in England and Wales go to nursery for up to ten hours a day. In many cases, nurseries are providing the majority of their daily food during the working week.

But a new report produced by Organix and the Soil Association has found that the foods served at nurseries can be unhealthy, highly processed and potentially dangerous – and the Government does nothing to stop this happening.

Following the publication of the report, entitled Georgie Porgie Pudding and Pie: Exposing the Truth About Nursery Food, Organix and Soil Association are launching a campaign to improve nutrition in nurseries by calling for national nutritional standards to be implemented by the Government.

The report examined the quality of food given to young children in nurseries across England and Wales.  It polled the views of 1,772 parents who have children in nursery as well as 487 nursery employees. It also looked in-depth at various nurseries across the UK, to find out more about how nurseries approach nutrition.

On average, parents pay £159 per week or just over £31 a day, for a child under two to go to nursery. The report found that a very small fraction of this cost goes on food, on average 3-6% of the cost of sending a child to nursery. And 3% of nurseries are spending as little as 25p a day feeding each child.

However, on a more positive note, the report also found nurseries who were feeding children, balanced nutritious meals on as little as 80p a day, for example Abbeywood Tots nursery in Bristol, which serves 100 per cent organic and local food.  The average spend was around £1 a day.


Organix and the Soil Association believe the true problem is lack of guidelines given to nurseries and lack of training for nursery staff, which reflects a lack of investment by Government. OFSTED inspectors who visit nurseries in England are not required to check anything more than whether adequate amounts of food and drink are supplied – and whether this food and drink is “nutritious”, but they are not given any definition of what ‘nutritious’ means. Very few of the nursery workers polled had any formal qualifications in food preparation or nutrition.
Organix and the Soil Association are calling on the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) to take responsibility for food in nurseries and develop mandatory national standards.  Clear standards apply in many other European countries and the majority of parents and nursery workers polled want the same in the UK.

Lizzie Vann, founder of Organix and campaigner for better nutrition for children, said: “We commissioned this research and published this report because someone needs to draw a line in the sand from which improvements can be made.  The state of food in too many nurseries is indefensible. The Government must take responsibility for food in nurseries as they have in primary and secondary schools, and substantial changes must be made urgently.  Our children deserve nothing less.”
The standards set by the Soil Association led Food for Life Partnership - used throughout England - should be adopted as basic criteria for nursery school food provision.  They represent the gold standard for school meals, building on the Caroline Walker Trust nutrient-based standards, and to that adding the following criteria:

• Minimum 75 per cent of meals to be made from unprocessed food/ingredients

• Minimum 50 per cent of food to be locally sourced

• Minimum 30 per cent of food to come from certified organic ingredients

• Environmental sustainability of food provision

Appropriate food education

While the Food for Life targets are the best examples of their kind in primary and secondary schools, younger children, who are more vulnerable, deserve equally high standards as a minimum in their food provision. If these standards can work for older children, then younger and more vulnerable children deserve nothing less.

Peter Melchett, Soil Association policy director, said: “Until now, everyone has overlooked the quality of food given to children in nurseries. Sadly we have in many cases been overlooking a scandal.  Children under-five are at their most vulnerable.  It is then they really need healthy food.  This report sets out what nurseries, parents, and the Government must do to make sure every child gets the healthy food they need for a healthy start in life.”

Organix is keen that nurseries and parents be the driving force in changing the way children are fed at nurseries. They will be providing information and guidance through the campaign website at www.nurseryfood.org in order to help improve nursery food.

Organix and Soil Association have started a campaign for Better Nursery Food Now. Those interested in signing up to the campaign or finding out more should go to www.nurseryfood.org

Organix is a pioneering food company, based in Dorset making healthy, fun, organic foods to give babies and children the best start in life, and campaigning to improve the quality of children’s food. Organix was founded by Lizzie Vann in 1992.  Her own experience of poor health in childhood left Lizzie with a passion for changing the children’s food industry so that parents have more choice to give their children high quality, nutritious food.
www.organix.com
www.organixfoundation.org

The Soil Association is the UK’s leading campaigning and certification organisation for organic food and farming. It exists to research, develop and promote sustainable relationships between the soil, plants, animals, people and the biosphere, in order to produce healthy food and other products while protecting and enhancing the environment.
www.soilassociation.org