Is poor nursery food playing games with children's health?

EVERY weekday more than half-a-million working parents pack their children off to nursery schools.

It is vital that these boys and girls, aged between two and five, eat healthy food. Their young bodies are developing rapidly and key nutrients are essential to help bones and organs grow.

Often nursery schools are responsible for providing almost everything a child eats during the week. Typically that is three meals plus two snacks.

However, a recent report found the quality is often poor. Crisps, fizzy drinks, biscuits and economy burgers, which are banned or restricted at primary and secondary schools, are still on many menus.

Mums and dads paying a small fortune for nursery places will be shocked to learn that just a fraction of their fees goes on food. In the worst cases, nursery schools are spending 25p per meal for each child.

Emma Hockridge, a policy campaigner for the Soil Association which carried out the research, says: “We came across many nurseries serving food and drink that isn’t allowed in primary and secondary schools. Nursery age is a key time for a child’s development so that is unacceptable.

“We are not saying that it’s happening across the board but a lot of nursery schools are serving too much unhealthy food.” The organisation says the quality of food at too many nurseries is “indefensible”.

Researchers found that about a quarter of nursery schools were handing out crisps, which are salty and high in fat. Additives not permitted under EU law in foods for young children were also regularly found in nursery meals.

At one nursery visited by a researcher posing as a prospective parent, children were eating chocolate biscuits, crisps and processed hash browns.

Sausages were on the menu twice a week but there was no oily fish, even though there was a port just down the road.

By law nursery schools and childminders must provide a healthy, balanced diet but campaigners claim the rules are too vague and badly enforced. In addition, there are no clear guidelines on portion size.

While Jamie Oliver has put school meals in the spotlight, it’s claimed that nursery food is lagging behind. Eight out of 10 workers surveyed believed that children at their nursery school were not given healthy food.

One 22-year-old assistant, who worked at a nursery school in north London, says fresh ingredients were rarely used.

“The cook used to put a frozen lasagne in the oven and serve it with garlic bread,” she says. “Sometimes the garlic bread was so burnt that it would shatter into lots of pieces if you knocked it. But it was still served it to the children.

“They also used to get burnt chips. The last straw came when she served up another pasta salad made with loads of leftovers. It included hot dog sausages from the previous day and cold baked beans.”

Fresh fruit was rarely on the menu and vegetables were not served with every meal.

The puddings at the nursery were all processed including ice-cream, cake and custard and jam tarts, says the assistant, who now works at another school where the food is better.

Judy More, of the British Dietetic Association, who specialises in children’s nutrition, insists that it’s crucial that two

to five‑year-olds get the right food.

“It’s a time of their life when they are growing quite rapidly and they have higher nutritional requirements than older children and adults,” she says.

“They have small stomachs so it’s important they get the right food to provide these nutrients. ”

For bone and organ growth, children need lots of fruit and vegetables, milk, cheese, yogurt and starches such as rice and pasta. Young children also require iron from lean red meat, fish, eggs, nuts and beans.

As long as they get those foods, some sugary snacks and puddings are fine. Desserts containing milk are ideal but giving children too much chocolate and biscuits can lead to weight problems.

Fruit juice is healthier than fizzy drinks but it should be diluted as it contains acid, which is bad for teeth. It’s recommended that fruit juices are served only with meals.

Whole milk, which is packed with vitamin A, is better for young children than skimmed or semi-skimmed. Judy adds: “Nursery schools are a fantastic environment for children to learn about food. At that age they can be faddy but if healthy food is put in front of them and they see other children enjoying it, they learn to enjoy it, too.”

Parents shouldn’t be afraid to ask lots of questions about a nursery school’s food policy, says Dr Helen Crawley, science advisor for the Caroline Walker Trust, which campaigns for healthy food and has produced guidelines for feeding the under-fives.

“There is scope for better standards,” she says. “One of the biggest problems is lack of skills and imagination among cooks. There’s a perception that healthy food is more expensive but that doesn’t have to be the case.” It should be possible to cook a healthy meal using fresh ingredients for less than £1, say experts.

Often, parents don’t know what is going on in the kitchens. Alison Newton, 37, from Salisbury, Wiltshire, assumed her daughter, Katie, now four, was being served healthy food at her nursery school.

She says: “When we first went there, we explained that we had to be careful about certain foods because Katie has allergies to nuts and milk and she wouldn’t be able to eat most processed foods because of cross-contamination issues. We were assured that they had their own kitchen, which I was shown and that this wouldn’t be a problem.

“This was very reassuring and left me with the impression that everything was cooked from scratch in-house.”

A few months later, Alison saw a huge pile of frozen food boxes containing processed foods, being delivered when she dropped her daughter off. She discovered that all the food was bought in and reheated.

“I was pretty horrified that this was happening without my knowledge and I felt that I had been misled,” she says.

“I felt so let down and I made sure that she no longer stayed for meals. Katie left as soon as we could find a new nursery. I feel so lucky that she did not have a nasty reaction to one of the meals. It could have been so much worse.”

Alison now oversees a nursery at Chafyn Grove School in Salisbury where she monitors all the food preparation. Almost all the meals are freshly prepared or locally sourced, under the watchful eye of a school nurse.

“We communicate with parents all the time and get their input on the menus,” says Alison. “I think parents want to know that their children are getting wholesome food.”