Liverpool Nursery Nutrition and Food Provision (Phase 1)

This work has recently been published in Public Health Nutrition, volume 14, issue 10, pp. 1867-1875

Background

Research into the health and wellbeing of children shows that their daily diet raises major concerns about their current and future health. From an early age children develop patterns of healthy eating and therefore schools and nurseries offer a place where we can support children in the consumption of a healthy diet. Unlike schools however, there are no current minimum standards for food provision in nurseries. The School Food Trust therefore highlights the need for a ‘more comprehensive, coherent food and nutrition guidance for nurseries that can be accessed easily and be appropriately delivered by all early years settings in England.’

The project team were extremely well organised, exceeded the set targets and met each deadline. The final report was well written and was widely disseminated. This project has been presented at local and national forums and may inform future national guidelines.

Kate McFadden
Liverpool PCT

Approach

Liverpool First for Health and Wellbeing Partnership identified the need to offer support to early years settings across the city. To ensure this support meets the needs of nurseries and stakeholders it was important to gain a detailed picture of existing practice, knowledge and provision. HM Partnerships were commissioned to carry out an evaluation of current nursery nutrition to identify and maximise opportunities for promoting healthy food provision.

Findings

All 130 nurseries in Liverpool were invited to take part in this review, of which 49 (38%) became actively involved. The sample of respondents was broadly representative of total nurseries in terms of nursery type and location across the city.

The headline results include:

• Nearly ¼ of nurseries do not have a food policy in place
• Average spend per child per main meal is £1 – £2
• 57% of nurseries do not regularly assess their menus for nutritional quality
• 61% of caterers reported to having received only a ‘little’ advice on healthy eating and this was often not specific to under 5s nutrition
• Only 21% of respondents stated that they have adequate knowledge on nutrition of pre-school children
• 29% of nurseries offer cakes/biscuits on a daily basis
• No nurseries have fully compliant (with Caroline Walker Trust Guidelines) menus
• All menus are deficient in: energy, carbohydrate, iron and zinc
• 85% of nurseries have sodium/salt levels which exceed guidelines
• There are no significant differences between public and private sector nurseries
• There are no significant differences between Neighbourhood Management areas