Get your fruit juice facts here!

Another week, another children’s food story certain to leave lots of parents feeling seriously confused!

Fruit juice is one way to help your child reach the five portions of fruit and veg they need to eat each day, and to take in important nutrients like vitamin C.

But it’s easy to forget that fruit juice contains sugar too. This can contribute to tooth decay if children have too much, too often.

So here are my top tips about how to include fruit juice in your child’s diet:

Keep serving sizes sensible:

• For one- to five-year-olds, a typical serving is about 50ml of unsweetened fruit juice, diluted with the same amount of water. Give them this with a meal, not with snacks or between meals – this helps to protect their teeth from the sugar and fruit acids in the juice. Doing it this way also helps children to absorb iron from their meal, thanks to the vitamin C in the juice
• 150ml of unsweetened fruit juice for primary and secondary school-aged children is enough to give them one of their 5-a-day, and will give them all of their daily requirement for vitamin C. You can make the drink longer for an older child by mixing the juice with tap or sparkling water
• Remember – however much fruit juice a child drinks, it can only ever count as one of their 5-a-day. That’s because fruit juice doesn’t contain all the nutritional benefits (like fibre) of fresh fruit, so it’s worth sticking to just one glass a day, and encouraging kids to eat lots of other types of fruit and veg as well.

Watch out for ‘fruit juice drinks’: these often look very similar to fruit juice, and have a similar name, but usually contain only a small amount of fruit juice. Sometimes there’s added sugar or sweeteners in them too.

Ask if your childcare provider is using our guidelines for healthy food and drinks in early years settings: these recommend tap water and milk as the only drinks you should give young children between meals to protect their teeth, and that diluted fruit juice should only be provided at mealtimes.

Try school meals: the National School Food Standards recommend tap water, fruit juice and milk – or combination drinks using milk, fruit juice and water – as healthier options when they get to school age.

Desserts can be another great way to get fruit into your child’s diet. Try our recipes for young children here and for older children in schools here.

And don’t forget to visit out Take Two campaign – click on the Facebook link to share your tips on getting children and teens to tuck into at least two portions of fruit and veg at lunchtime.

Claire’s one of our nutritionists – here to help anyone wanting advice on feeding children well. Email Claire.

Don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?

Good old back to school time. Always our busiest time of the year! Whether it’s schools starting a new service with a new caterer; trying something new in the dining room; or running special offers for new Year 7s or reception classes – there’s always a new request for advice or information coming through.

But some of the enquiries we get at this time of year are less about looking to the future and more about dealing with the now. At the end of last term, we were contacted by several parents whose schools had decided that they couldn’t continue to offer school meals this year. For all sorts of reasons, the schools had told parents they didn’t think they could make the numbers stack up.

They’re the calls and emails we’re always really sad to get. As a charity, we know only too well that times are really tough for everyone at the moment. We’re out in schools every day, so we also know how hard it is to keep some school meals services going.

But returns are about more than just the financial. School meals pay back for your school in all sorts of other ways: helping to keep children in a fit state to learn in the afternoon; giving them consistent messages about eating well to perform well – improving attainment, as research over the summer pointed out; giving children the social skills that come with eating with their friends. And apart from anything else, school meals are one of the ways to help prevent food poverty for children – as the main meal of the day for so many.

That’s why parents are often so worried when school meals are in jeopardy. That song lyric about how “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” really rings true here: parents facing the end of the service at their school sometimes tell us they’ve taken school meals for granted, assuming they will always be an option – when the reality at that school might be that if they don’t use them, they could lose them. When parents realise this they are a) keen to spread the word b) keen to make sure meals at their child’s school are the best. Most simply want to roll up their sleeves and do whatever they can to help.

So if your school’s having problems with how to keep school meals going, time is everything. Talk to one of our children’s food advisors and we can help you work through possible solutions before it’s too late. If you’re already worrying about numbers for this year, don’t struggle on alone!

Lisette’s one of our children’s food advisors, who works with groups of parents who are trying to help their schools improve lunchtimes. Email Lisette.

The million-dollar school food questions

Ask our chief executive, Judy, why she wanted this job and she’ll tell you a big part of it came from her own experiences as a parent. She wanted her children to be able to eat well, but she also remembers how hard it can be to speak up when you’re not happy – or when you’ve got a good idea but you’re not sure how to turn it into action. Do other parents feel the same? Who should you raise issues with at school? What if no one will help?

I hear the same concerns in my work to help parents get involved with improving food at their children’s schools. Often, they’ve never been asked for their opinion, and aren’t sure how to get their voices heard. But the more they take part and the more they question, the better lunchtimes get. What’s really interesting is that parents are incredibly good at suggesting solutions that will work. You’re keen to roll up your sleeves, and great at getting other parents to support what you’re doing.

Your views of the food at your child’s school have never been more important. Your influence can be very powerful in demanding that every child has a good experience at lunchtime. And this is make or break stuff – we know that how children feel about lunch can often determine how they feel about their entire day at school.

So, here are my top picks of questions to ask if you’re looking at a school for your child. They’ll help you find out how your school’s catering works so that you can get yourself more involved:

• Do you cook hot meals from scratch in your own kitchens?
• Where will I find your menus?
• Can I come in and try a meal?
• How do pupils choose what to eat?
• How much is a school meal?
• Can my child have seconds?
• Do you run any special offers?
• Do you have a cooking club?
• Do you have Healthy Schools Status?

If your child’s already at school, here’s when you know you need to ask more questions:

• Your child says the lunch queue’s too long or that they can never get a seat
• Your child says certain food options are regularly running out before he/she gets to the front of the queue
• Your child keeps asking for a packed lunch instead, or for money to go out at lunchtime
• Your child says they’re hungry in the afternoons
• Your child doesn’t want to go into the canteen at all

Find more information about what to ask about school food here.

Watch a video we’ve made of the fantastic work being done by Hatfield Woodhouse Primary School, led by a group of parents.

Lisette works with parents at many schools to help them get more involved with school food, and is a trainer for our Let’s Get Cooking programme. If you and parents at your school would like to do more, she’d love to hear from you. Email Lisette.