Find out if your menu meets healthy food and drinks guidelines, with an assessment from the Healthy Eating Advisory Service.

You will receive a detailed report highlighting areas where the menu meets the guidelines, and specific recommendations to help you make healthy changes where needed.

Having a menu assessment will help your early childhood education and care service towards achieving:

• Quality Area 2.1.3 (Healthy Lifestyle) of the National Quality Standard
• Education and Care Services National Law and Regulations
• the Healthy Eating and Oral Health Benchmarks of the Achievement Program*
• Smiles 4 Miles award.*

Skip to:

• Long day care
• Outside school hours care

* Achievement Program and Smiles 4 Miles

The Victorian Government recommends that Victorian long day care services use the Healthy Eating Advisory Service’s FoodChecker to plan their menus.

To learn more, read this Victorian Government position statement.

Long day care

FoodChecker is the free way to assess your long day care menu online, and get instant feedback!

You can assess one day or one week of your child care menu at a time to see if it meets the Victorian Menu planning guidelines for long day care.

When you assess your menu on FoodChecker you will receive a report containing your results, plus recommendations for healthy changes. You can read your report on screen or save it as a PDF.

Once you have made changes to your centre menu, you can reassess it on FoodChecker to see if it meets the guidelines.
 

"FoodChecker is awesome! I can assess outside of work hours which is great because I'm always on the floor, and it means I can do it rather than the director."
- Long day care cook

You can also use FoodChecker to plan future menus that meet the Victorian Menu planning guidelines for long day care. PLUS you can download a copy of your menu to display, and print a shopping list with all of the ingredients you’ll need for the week.

Have the following information ready to start using FoodChecker:

• your menu for one day or one week
• every recipe featured on the menu that you’re going to assess
• a quantity for each ingredient (eg, grams, kilograms, litres, etc)
• the number of children you are cooking for (over 12 months of age)

Go to FoodChecker.

Outside school hours care

Are you planning your next menu?

Let us assess it now to make sure it meets the Food and drink guidelines for OSHC straight away!

Before having a menu assessment, make sure you have visited the Getting started page to see the recommended steps to having a healthy menu.

These include:

• demonstrated commitment and leadership from management
• having a healthy eating policy which is applied across the service
• learning more about the Food and drink guidelines for OSHC
  • Read about the guidelines here.
  • Or complete online training or face to face training.
• making healthy changes to your menu in priority areas.

Once you have completed these steps above, then you can submit your menu for an assessment:

Step 1

Download and complete the menu assessment booking form: PDF (178KB) or Microsoft Word (145KB)

Step 2

Gather copies of the following:

• Your current menu, including information about the foods and drinks provided at each meal and snack time.
• The quantities of all foods and drinks provided at each meal and snack time. For example, the number of whole pieces of fruit on a fruit platter, or the quantity of milk per serve per child.
• All recipes featured in the menu including the quantity of each ingredient used.
   

Step 3

Email your completed booking form to heas@nutritionaustralia.org.au

Please note: Due to high demand, menu assessments for OSHC can take 4-6 weeks to complete. One of our team will contact you when your submission has been received.