Getting started guide

Eating habits are built from a young age. Early childhood services play a big role in the health and wellbeing of the children in their care. You can help promote positive eating behaviours in the kitchen and classroom.

The benefits include healthy growth and development, good mental and oral health and a reduced risk of developing health issues later in life.

Providing and promoting healthy foods and drinks:

• Helps your service meet the healthy food and drink requirement. This includes: National Quality Framework, and Menu planning guidelines.
• Improves concentration for children to learn better and be more alert.
• Supports your service to achieve objectives of other health initiatives such as the Achievement Program or Smiles 4 Miles.
• Supports environmental sustainability. For example, preparing fresh and healthy foods from scratch can reduce food waste and packaging.

A service that provides and promotes nutritious food and drinks will:

• provide food and drinks on their menus that meet the relevant healthy eating guidelines for children
• have a mealtime set up that supports healthy eating and is age/development stage appropriate
• have a healthy eating policy and relevant procedures in place to support healthy eating and healthy changes
• promote healthy eating messages in the curriculum
• engage with families to support them in reinforcing healthy eating messages at home

The steps below outline the ideal process you can follow to achieve this. It may not always be possible or suitable to work through them in the recommended order.

You should aim to make progress where you can and in an order suitable to your context and ability.

Gaining this support should be one of your first steps.

When managers actively lead change, it helps everyone in your service to feel supported and motivated to be involved.

To start the process of making healthy changes:

• Speak to managers about the importance of healthy eating. Get their support for making healthy changes and encourage them to take an active role in the process.
• Communicate that healthy eating changes assist the service to meet requirements of the National Quality Standard. It also shows best practice to the parents and carers of the children at your service.
• Work with management to ensure there is adequate time, money, resourcing and support for changes.

Remember, healthy eating is not a job for just one person! In fact, everyone in your service has a role to play.

Once you have secured management support:

• Create a working group or committee that includes key staff, healthy eating champions and management. Select someone to coordinate the group.
• This group can drive change, decide on goals, timelines and strategies, and encourage and support other staff to participate.
• Create a healthy eating policy for your service (see Step 2 below – Develop a healthy eating policy).

Creating a healthy eating policy in your service will help to embed and sustain healthy changes.

It also provides your staff and parents with consistent information about your goals and practices.

You can work together to develop a new policy or review your existing one. Once this policy is approved, communicate it to your whole service community.

The policy should include benchmarks related to:

• leadership and commitment
• a healthy physical environment
• a healthy culture
• child teaching and learning
• supported staff and educators
• families and community partnerships

Having a healthy eating policy is also a requirement of The National Quality Standard and The Achievement Program.

Service staff can learn how to plan healthy menus and promote healthy eating with our free online training modules.

Online training can be completed anywhere, anytime. Each module takes less than one hour to complete and participants receive a certificate of completion.

The following options are available:

Healthy eating in long day care

In these interactive modules, long day care cooks and educators will learn:

• about the healthy food and drink guidelines for long day care
• how to plan healthy menus
• simple meal, snack and drink ideas for children
• healthy ingredient swaps and shopping tips
• ways to deal with challenges like food allergies and budgeting
• and much more!

Promoting healthy eating in long day care

In this training module, long day care educators will learn:

• how to promote healthy eating in the classroom and at mealtimes
• common barriers to children’s acceptance of new foods and how to overcome them
• strategies to engage families in developing healthy eating habits.

Managing allergies and other dietary requirements

In this training module, long day care educators will learn:

• the common food allergens and how to make appropriate swaps
• how to find allergen information on product labels
• cross contamination and how to minimise risk
• information about other dietary requirements such as vegetarian, halal and kosher
• and much more!

The following steps can be done in any order, and at the same time.

Make healthy changes to your menus

After completing training and assessing your menu, you can start making healthy changes to your current menus and plan future ones. The best way to start is by making simple changes that will have a big impact.

You can use FoodChecker or the checklists for family day care to plan new menus and update existing ones.

Start by making sure:

• all meals and snacks are based on food from the five food groups: fruits; vegetables and legumes; grain (cereal) foods; milk, yoghurt, cheese and/or alternatives; lean meat and poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, nuts and seeds and legumes/beans)
• there is a variety of fruit and vegetables
• ‘discretionary’ foods and drinks with little nutritional value are not on the menu
• water is freely available

Promote healthy eating

Educators have an important role to play in promoting healthy eating to children.

The National Quality Framework recommends that early childhood services support all aspects of children’s health. This includes providing nutritious meals and promoting healthy lifestyles, everyday routines and experiences.

Examples of how educators can promote healthy eating include:

• teaching children about foods through discussions, questions, games and cooking activities
• making mealtimes relaxed and comfortable
• talking in positive ways about the foods children are eating
• encouraging children to try new foods

Host healthy events and fundraising

Incorporating healthy foods and drinks into events and fundraising activities can reinforce healthy eating messages and create a healthy culture.

This includes ‘special menus’ for birthdays or other celebrations, or family and community events, making healthy eating the ‘norm’.

You could plan a calendar of healthy eating promotions. This can include events that involve families and reinforce healthy eating messaging (such as Harmony Day or Book Week).

You can also replace traditional fundraising activities, such as cake stalls and chocolate drives with healthier options or non-food alternatives.