Nutrients

By providing freshly prepared and produced dinners we hope to reduce and in some cases, remove unnecessary additives from our menus. We are constantly trying to improve the quality of our dinners and we hope that both parents and teachers will support our philosophy of providing good, fresh, wholesome meals to Nottinghamshire school children.  

As part of our improvements we no longer add salt to our meals or have it readily available in the school dining rooms. Also any recipes that require fats, i.e. pastry, have been supplemented by only using polyunsaturated variants, which are high in essential oils. We are a totally GM free organisation and work very closely with all suppliers to ensure that every product purchased does not contain GM foods.

As some of you may already be aware the governement have recently introduced strict nutrient based standards for school dinners -to ensure children are getting healthy food choices at lunchtime. These standards came into effect for primary schools in September 2008 and will be rolled across to secondaries in September 2009.

There are 14 nutrient based standards, derived from the UK nutrient recommendations, which define the minimum and maximum levels that should be used in school meals. You can see how our new three week menu cycle meets these standards by viewing our nutrient based standards graph [PDF 114KB]

For more infomation on the nutrient based standards and how they affect your child's school dinners, visit the School Food Trust's website at www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk.

We are very proud of Nottinghamshire school dinners. In fact we were the first Authority to put Scottish salmon fillets and more recently venison burgers on our menus. Both products have been a great way for us to maintain variety in school meals at the same time as offering meals high in essential nutrients.