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Essential Cuisine supports National School Meals Week
For the last 30 years, National School Meals Week (NSMW) has been raising awareness about the importance of nutritious school meals. With the education sector, amongst others, dealing with the daily challenges of the COVID pandemic, this campaign has never been more important.
With the return of hot meals being staggered over the country, we stand with LACA and their Hot’ober initiative, to encourage conversations between caterers, school representatives, on site staff and parents to facilitate the return of hot lunches as soon as everyone feels it safe to do so.
The initiative is based on the well-known benefits to children’s attainment and development of eating a balanced diet and the belief that it’s of paramount importance to return to hot meals as soon as possible.
LACA have arranged a week of fun, educational themes for National School Meals Week 2020 in aim to get children back to enjoying hot school meals, to fuel healthy minds and to support British food. A range of free resources including posters and activities are available to download here.
We’ve listed some inspiration below to help you with your menu planning!
Monday - Go meat free
"Choosing a vegetarian menu for the day not only has health benefits but also benefits the environment. We know many caterers are already promoting this once a week” - LACA
Tuesday - The school meals oscars
"A day of students’ favourite meals – where the menu items are the ‘star of the show’ – you can encourage parents and children to submit their favourite meal and dessert to be served at school” - LACA
Wednesday - National roast dinner day
"The Soil Association – Food for Life are once again running this extremely popular event and we encourage school caterers to get behind it” - LACA
Thursday - The great British school lunch
"With support from ‘Love British Food’, we will encourage caterers to showcase a menu packed with British favourites, which have topped our polls so we know they will be popular. It’s so important to support our farmers, local businesses and reduce food miles to protect our environment” - LACA
Friday - Thank you key workers!
"We are asking all caterers to invite their local MP into a school for lunch where he/she will be asked to present a certificate to that catering team, representing all the catering staff in each constituency who have been heroes throughout the Covid pandemic” - LACA
Our team of chefs are constantly working to bring new, inspirational, well-balanced recipe ideas to you - all full of colour, texture and of course flavour with the help of the finest gluten free stock and sauce bases on the market.
To find out more about how we support the education sector click here or for recipe inspiration, tailored to schools click here.
