Supporting Healthy Eating
The following information could be helpful in supporting cooks and services to do the best they can in maintaining compliance with Australian Dietary Guidelines (including maximising menu variety) and Caring for Children resource:
- Nutrition Checklist for planning sandwich menus to support services to provide healthy sandwiches as main meals
- Creating a Healthy Non-Meat (vegetarian) Meal for Early Childhood Services Tip Sheet and the vegetarian section in Caring for Children (p35) as a resource to use when meat is unavailable
- How to Include Iron Containing Foods on the Menu to highlight ways to provide iron rich foods when red meat is not an option
- Munch & Move also recommends accessing the appendix (page 109) of The Yummy Tummy Book, a cookbook developed by the Western NSW Local Health District team, which has ideas for ingredient substitutions when access to fresh produce is difficult:www.healthykids.nsw.gov.au/downloads/file/campaignsprograms/TheYummyTummyBook.pdf
This link and video from the Australian Childcare Alliance, which we have permission to share with our networks:https://childcarealliance.org.au/latestnews/adaptingmenus.
It focuses on adapting children’s service menus during food shortages. This was developed in response to recent food shortages resulting from grocery stockpiling as a result of COVID-19.
