Food in Schools: Advice/Guidance

Encouraging healthy eating in school is an area that many schools have made a strong commitment to.  The benefits of eating regular, nutritious meals have been the subject of academic research and on-going work hopes to clearly establish the links between food, behaviour and performance.  Patterns are emerging in this area and there are well established links between healthy weight and long term health.

Schools have an important role to play in encouraging healthy behaviours towards food and in this section you will find documentation to support the development of a whole school food policy, advice on packed lunches, how to set up a School Nutrition Action Group and lots more.

Healthy Lunchboxes are an important part of your healthy schools work and can contribute to wider work to help reduce childhood obesity. Packed lunches are often an area of confusion for parents and teachers alike. A good starting point for developing your own school's packed lunch policy is this sample one. It should be stressed that this is only a starting point.

You can use our draft version of a healthy lunchbox booklet as guidance when raising awareness of healthy eating, supporting parents or creating a healthy lunch policy. 

This page will be updated as new resources become available and if you have anything you would like to share please send it to us.