Primary schools becoming food smart with Change4Life!

Change4Life offers curriculum-linked resources and inspiration to help educators teach children about healthy eating and being active. The organisation is dedicated to providing quality resources and classroom ideas. As the site develops, Change4Life will also provide support on food preparation and cooking, where food comes from, plus great ideas for PE lessons.

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Website: campaignresources.phe.gov.uk/schools Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Change4Life has launched a new Be Food Smart campaign to help children and their families discover how much sugar, saturated fat and salt is in their everyday food and drink. To support the campaign, Change4Life has created a new set of resources to help Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 pupils understand what’s in their food and how to make healthier choices.

These resources will enable teachers to deliver fun, engaging and real-life lessons built around the English and Maths curricula, including a curriculum-linked assembly, classroom activities, a pupil-led campaign and a set of fun films demonstrating the new Be Food Smart app.

Teachers can use the app to help bring to life the lesson activities by simply scanning everyday products to reveal their sugar, saturated fat and salt content. The app is free to download from the App Store or Google Play.

Schools are also encouraged to run their own pupil-led Be Food Smart campaign to help other pupils, parents and the wider community to understand how food choices impact on our health and how we can make healthier choices. Each school can share examples of their activities on social media using the hashtag #BeFoodSmart.

According to Public Health England, creators of Change4Life, English children consume more than 11g of sugar at breakfast time alone, almost 3 sugar cubes. The recommended daily maximum is no more than 5 cubes of sugar for 4- to 6-year-olds, and no more than 6 cubes for 7- to 10-year-olds per day. By the end of the day, children consume more than three times these recommendations.

To help embed healthy behaviour early in life, more than 16,500 Change4Life Be Food Smart packs will be distributed to Primary schools this January as part of their School Fruit & Veg Scheme delivery, along with parent packs for each pupil to take home to their parents.

Visit www.nhs.uk/change4life-beta/be-food-smart or contact [email protected] for more information.