At Play B C we know what children eat and drink with us is important. We:

• recognise our role supporting children and their families to develop and maintain a healthy diet.
• promote awareness of a healthy lifestyle.
• model good practice and create an environment which supports a positive attitude to food and drink.
• acknowledge the link between children’s diets and their physical and emotional health.

We provide healthy snacks for the children of fresh fruit, vegetables, protein and a starchy food.  We prefer all children staying for lunch to have a hot meal. This aligns with our commitment to promote children’s overall well-being and development and our steps towards the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger, fostering a future where every child has access to nourishing food for a brighter and more sustainable world. We feel that it is in their best interests for a number of reasons such as:

• • Exposure to different foods, flavours and tastes, which helps with the transition to school dinners, and sets up eating a varied diet throughout life.
  • Ensuring no allergenic foods are brought into preschool.
  • Receiving at least one balanced, freshly cooked, hot meal each day.
  • Developing self-care skills such as eating with a knife and fork.

  In the case of children with restricted diets we will work with the families in support of this. Any food or snacks sent in from home must comply with the the DfE guidance for early years settings on nutrition please see our Food Policy for further details.

  

  Zebedees cater our hot meals and they follow the “Eat Better Start Better” guidelines for the Early Years. Their menus are planned in advance and reflect a range of cultures, textures, colours and variety too because they are rotated regularly. They have even been able to support us by providing carbohydrate counted meals for diabetic students.

  You can find out lots more about Zebedees’ food and nutrition for under fives in this document.

  
  Zebedees Mediterranean Sauce mentioned in the video contains onion, peppers, swede, red lentils, tomato passata, oregano & basil. It is served with beef meatballs, but also works well with diced chicken, and is delicious on its own as an accompaniment to pasta too. We cannot give you weights for a family sized portion as Zebedees cook in large volumes, however, you can hopefully take the list of ingredients and adapt to you own needs. They recommend grating the swede and finely dicing or grating the other vegetables. The red lentils are pre-soaked before cooking to make them soft. Chopped tinned tomatoes could be used in place of the passata.

  Also mentioned was their Yellow Thai Curry sauce, which is serve with diced chicken breast but would work equally as well with just the vegetables. This dish is a lovely golden colour and is made with coconut milk which is naturally dairy free. It contains diced potato, onion, butternut squash, cauliflower, ginger, dried apricot, garlic coconut milk, rice flour (to thicken), Thai curry paste, basil, coriander, cumin, turmeric and yellow peppers. Spices are used sparingly in this dish, either Thai green or red curry paste works, although red will affect the colour of the dish. Grated or blitzed dried apricot helps to sweeten the sauce.

  Nadia wishes you happy cooking!