SCHOOL MEALTIMES

Let’s support our kids to eat well at school

This generation of children are growing up in a time of extreme diet culture, body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. Healthy eating advice is conflicting and confusing. Teachers are under-resourced. Parents are overwhelmed. Health Professionals are starting to see the impacts in their clinics. Everyone is struggling to know what is best.

But it doesn’t have to be like this.

As a community there are lots of ways we can support this generation to become confident, adventurous eaters who have a positive relationship with food and their bodies.

Help our children grow into teens and adults who:

  • Enjoy a wide variety of foods

  • Listen to their hunger and fullness cues

  • Feel in control around all types of food

  • Feel comfortable in their bodies

What could it look like?

Parents and caregivers who:

  • Send a range of foods to school

  • Role model confident, adventurous eating at home

  • Demonstrate body respect

  • Advocate for their child’s needs

  • Trust their child to eat freely

  • Trust teachers to support their child

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Teachers and schools who:

  • Create a safe eating environment at school

  • Model positive attitudes towards food, health and bodies

  • Protect children from food and body shaming, nutrition misinformation and diet-talk

  • Support children to eat freely from their lunchboxes during dedicated mealtimes

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Health Professionals who:

  • Work with children and parents to support confident, adventurous eaters

  • Offer consistent, evidenced based care, in line with these principles

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Which leads to

Children who:

  • Choose happily from their lunchbox

  • Eat as much as they need to be full

  • Are free from feelings of guilt, shame or fear around food

  • Feel confident to try new foods, in their own time

Some of this will be challenging for us. We might need to unlearn some old rules about food and our bodies. We will need to trust our children to make decisions that we are used to making for them. It won’t be perfect. But it will be worthwhile. 

Change is coming. Let’s work together to bring it in.

Join the School Mealtimes movement!

School Mealtimes aims to create safe and empowering school food environments that help school-aged children to become confident, adventurous eaters.

What can you do right now?

Parents and caregivers

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Teachers and schools

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Health Professionals

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Watch this space.

School Mealtimes is growing momentum. My team and I are hard at work on all kinds of supporting resources which we will release throughout this year. 

Also coming soon: Family Mealtimes, a membership program in the style of Baby Mealtimes and Toddler Mealtimes, for families with school-aged children. Packed with meal and lunchbox inspiration, recipes, advice and support, Family Mealtimes aims to take the stress out of feeding your whole family. Parents who join the School Mealtimes mailing list will be among the first invited to access the program when we launch later this year.

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