Healthy Tums in Brum

Jenny Millward of Birmingham City Council talks about the ‘Healthy Tums in Brum' Award a project which aimed to give young people the chance to learn about the importance of healthy eating and preparing food safely in a fun and practical way.

Aims and Objectives

The principal aims of the campaign were to raise awareness of food hygiene and healthy eating amongst 13 and 14 year olds (Year 9) through a school chef competition.

The project aimed to include a mix of young people from different cultures, socio economic backgrounds, and with a range of physical and mental abilities.

Partners

The project involved a number of key partners and relied on their participation for its success, both in the planning stage and during the delivery. They included:

The Food Standards Agency for setting the outline objectives i.e. to reduce food borne illness and diet related illnesses. The FSA also provided crucial financial support.
The Community Dietician provided invaluable help and support with the lesson plan, scoring criteria for the cooking competitions, and an overview of the nutritional messages that were being delivered.
The Education Department’s Health Promotion Officer ensured that the teaching methods were appropriate and pitched at the right level for the particular age group as well as promoting the campaign via the school network’s newsletter.
The commitment and enthusiasm of the teachers from the selected schools was of course crucial to the entire campaign. As well as fitting the workshop and competition into the timetable, teachers from each school accompanied their winning group to the final event.
The Executive Chef from The Radisson Hotel in Birmingham gave his time free of charge to act as overall judge at the final which gave kudos to the event and added incentive and motivation to the students.
The College of Food, Tourism and Creative Studies provided suitable facilities to enable the final cooking competition to be held at one venue. Rather than providing a full-scale catering kitchen which may have proved somewhat daunting to the students, they were able to let us use a room with domestic style cooking facilities.

Methodology

10 secondary schools were randomly selected across the City to take part in the competition which included a one hour workshop at each school to promote the 4C’s - Cooking, Cleaning, Chilling and Cross-contamination, and delivers the nutritional message to encourage young people to make healthy eating choices ie to reduce their intake of fat, sugar and salt and to increase their fruit and vegetable intake to 5-a-day.

In small groups the students then designed their own healthy two-course meal with drink, using a budget of £10.

A cooking competition was held at each school, where students are judged on hygienic food handling practices, the nutritional value of the meals and on the taste and presentation of the finished dishes. The winning group from each school goes through to the grand final to find the overall Healthy Tums in Brum Champions.

Every student who took part in the competition was given a goody bag containing a celebratory mug, a healthy meals cookbook, food hygiene and nutrition leaflets and a certificate of participation. The winners of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd awards received a high street voucher and the winning school was awarded £500 to spend on catering equipment for their Food Technology Department.

Promotion

Birmingham has 112 secondary schools, including independent, local authority-run, and faith schools which provide a service to children of mixed abilities, and from a very wide range of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. All of these were contacted by telephone to introduce the scheme and this was followed up with an information pack sent by e-mail and post. The campaign was also featured in the newsletter which is sent out to all schools. The aim was to reach as wide an audience as possible within the selected group of 13-14 year olds.

33 schools expressed an interest and participating schools were selected, randomly from each of the 10 parliamentary constituencies.

Year 9 was considered a good age to work with in this campaign as these students do not have GCSE pressure this year and many of them are starting to show an interest in cooking.

Resources

The Food Standards Agency provided funding. This covered staffing costs, design and artwork of exhibition boards, a new logo, handouts and goody bag contents. The workshop included a hand washing demo using a UV light box which had already been purchased.

Venues were the schools and so funding was not required. The College of Food also provided the venue for the final free of charge.

Evaluation

Evaluation of the campaign was via a quiz to test students’ knowledge after the workshop, and feedback from students and teachers, as well as improvements suggested by officers as the project progressed.

The results showed that the students had been influenced by the workshops to prepare food hygienically and to make healthy eating choices.

For example:

98% understood that preparing food hygienically prevented food poisoning.
83% of students knew the GDA for salt
93% knew that saturated fat was the type that should be reduced in the diet,
96% knew that they should be aiming to consume 5 portions of fruit and veg a day

Feedback forms from the teachers involved in the campaign showed that:

100% of teachers stated that the workshop content was appropriately pitched and approved of the teaching methods used
100% believed that their pupils would prepare food in a hygienic way in future
67% believed that their students would improve their eating habits as a result of the workshop.

Example comments received were:

‘It was a great competition which I would love to be a part of again’

‘Participation certificates were presented at assembly raising the profile of food in Key Stage 3’

‘A very worthwhile activity’

The overall winning menu of the 2006 competition was mozzarella stuffed chicken with herb rice and salad, followed by fresh fruit kebabs and accompanied by freshly squeezed orange juice. (winners pictured above)

Lessons Learned

The project has had benefits to others apart from those students who took part. It received good press coverage with articles published in three local newspapers, including The Birmingham News which is delivered to 80% of households in Birmingham. BBC Radio West Midlands featured a report on the day of the final. The messages of the campaign were disseminated by the students to their households and the participating schools used copies of the teaching material to other classes.

The materials have also been used for other presentations at schools, a local scout group during National Food Safety Week and sessions are being planned for a local junior football club on nutrition and sport.

Future Developments

The success of the project has meant that City Council Members are keen to see it developed this year and in the future. This year, the project has been funded within existing budgets, but as the expensive artwork was done last year, the costs are mainly staff time, plus trophies and prizes.

We are investigating sponsorship for future years. The information will shortly be available on our website so that it is available to other Local Authorities or to other schools who may wish to use the handouts or run their own cooking competitions.

Contact Details

Contact Name: Jenny Milward

Job Title: Food Safety Team Manager

Phone: 0121 303 4111

Email: Jenny.millward@birmingham.gov.uk

Fax: 0121 303 1391

Website: www.birmingham.gov.uk

Organisation: Birmingham City Council

Address: Regulatory Services 21-22 Calthorpe Rd, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 1RP

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