School Meal Analysis
Sue Harvey, Lead Officer – Food & Agriculture explains how Kent Trading Standards worked with the Council’s Education and Libraries Service and Kent Scientific Services (KSS) to examine the nutritional standards of school meals in the County’s primary schools.
Summary
Kent Trading Standards worked with Client Service Managers from the Education and Libraries Service to sample meals from 3 schools for one week. The samples consisted of copies of meals selected by 3 girls and 3 boys on each day. One school also produced 3 ‘ideal meals’ each day to demonstrate the choice available from the menu.
The meals were taken as informal samples, and analysed by Kent Scientific Services. Each meal was photographed; the ingredients weighed and then combined and homogenised to produce a weekly average sample that was analysed for full nutrition analysis.
Meals chosen by girls and by boys were analysed separately and compared to Caroline Walker Trust Guidelines.
The nutrition of each meal was calculated by using nutrition data from McCance and Widdowson. An Excel spreadsheet designed by Ian Hampton, a Public Analyst with Kent Scientific Services was able to demonstrate in a very clear pictorial manner the effect of pupil choice on nutrition content.
The following provides a detailed case study of how the work of Trading Standards, Education and Libraries and Kent Scientific Services has resulted in reviewing school meal nutritional standards.
Project Name: School Meals
Project Start Date: 2003
Project Location Type: Rural and city
Project Origins and original aims/Objectives and purpose of the project:
As many of us are aware a large number of school children throughout the country rely on their school meal as their main meal of the day. The meals need to meet the School Meal National Nutritional Standards, which specify the frequency of inclusion of certain ingredients.
There are concerns that these standards are not strict enough and those meals should also be examined using the Caroline Walker Trust guidelines. Having not been involved in school meal analysis recently it was decided to visit a small number of schools and sample meals provided by the main Kent school meal contractor.
The objectives were to:
- Compare the meals with the Caroline Walker Trust Guidelines and
- Look at the relevance of pupil choice on the nutritional content of school meals.
1. Kent Trading Standards Service
2. Kent Education and Libraries Service
3. Kent Scientific Services
4. School Meal Contractor
Target Audience:
Primary school children.
Methodology:
It was agreed that Client Service Managers who visit the schools from the Education and Libraries Service of KCC could, in addition to their usual tasks, also obtain the school meals samples for analysis. Three schools were chosen randomly and 6 meals per day from each school were taken.
- Samples 1-3: Meals chosen by three girls
- Samples 3-6: Meals chosen by three boys
To make the sampling task easier each meal was left on its tray, covered with cling film by the school and collected by Kent Scientific Services. The samples were then all taken directly to the laboratory each day. In total 105 were taken.
The meals were photographed and weighed and the nutrition information of the identified components was obtained from McCance and Widdowson tables and the calculations made.
The nutrition information of each meal was compared to the recommendation of the Caroline Walker Trust Guidelines and was displayed on an Excel spreadsheet. Each spreadsheet showed a photograph of the meal and a graph on the nutrition content and were very well received.
Finally at the end of the week the meals were all put together to produce an average sample and a full nutrition analysis was carried out. The results were compared to the Caroline Walker Trust Guidelines. The results were also compared to the average of the simulated figures from the McCance and Widdowson tables and a very good agreement was found indicating the accuracy of the database figures.
The results indicated that the nutritional content was generally satisfactory, however the meals were consistently short of iron, calcium and zinc.
The computer programme can be used to devise new menus. The nutrition content of all possible menu choices can be displayed in graphical form by simply entering "yes" against a menu item. These results can now be used by the school meals service in conjunction with the contractors to decide which foods should be made available on any given day.
Once the results had been collated Trading Standards and the Analyst then organised a meeting with the Education and Libraries Service and the Contractor’s Nutritionist to discuss how to use them in the new menus.
Funding:
- Education and Libraries paid for the school meals and provided approximately 25 hours of staff time
- Nutritionist – outside consultant paid by Education and Libraries to assist in menu development
- Trading Standards – Sue Harvey mainly facilitated the project using approximately 10 hours
- Analysts Costs (paid by Trading Standards)
Recruitment:
Kent Trading Standards were in the fortunate position that the Client Service Managers were able to collect the samples, however if this service is not available, non-food staff can easily collect the samples since it is only a matter of picking up the meals (selecting the pupil choice meals and ideal meals) and delivering them to the Analyst.
Other Resources:
It is important to have access to a dietician and an Analyst.
Sustainability:
It is hoped to repeat this exercise but this does depend on resources. However the results of the analysis of the meals compared favourably with the McCance and Widdowson tables and therefore there is no reason why the programme cannot be used indefinitely to help the school meals service and contractors in menu decisions.
Evaluation:
There has been no formal evaluation the project but the project found the meals to be nutritionally satisfactory. However it was recognised that it is ultimately down to pupil’s choice of meal as to whether their chosen meal is nutritionally balanced.
Lessons learnt:
Although embarking on a programme looking at the nutrition of school meals may seem daunting, it was not as time consuming for Trading Standards as first thought. By working with services from other parts of the Council it was only necessary for Trading Standards to act in a facilitating role. Sue Harvey would urge other trading standards to link in with their Education Services to see if they can assist in such projects.
Future Developments:
The program contains the menu cycle that will run from April to November in over 1000 schools and it could be used as a teaching aid for healthy eating. The process to make a menu choice is simply to enter "yes" against a menu item and is sufficiently straightforward that primary school pupils could do this for their own meals.The accuracy of the nutrient data has been improved by the analysis of actual ingredients and the use of manufactures analytical data as well as the original data from McCance and Widdowson. It is now possible to look forward rather than backward and to work with caterers to examine proposed menus and to display in bar graphs and traffic lights formats the effect of pupil choice on the selection or rejection of certain ingredients.
The next stage will be to work with the Kent Health & Education Partnership Strategy Group on Healthy Eating to see if they can use the information to help guide pupils into choosing healthier meals.
Name: Sue Harvey
Position: Principal Trading Standards Officer (Lead Officer – Food & Agriculture)
Address:
Invicta House,
Maidstone,
Kent
ME14 1XX
Telephone: 01622 221012
Email address: susan.harvey@kent.gov.uk