St. Rynaghs National School

SCOIL NAOMH RAGHNACH

Main St., Banagher, Co. Offaly   -   Phone: 057 91 51419
email: strynaghs@strynaghsns.com

Healthy Eating Lunch Policy

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Rationale:

The importance of this lunch policy in the context of our Social, Personal and Health Education Programme cannot be over emphasised. Good practice and good habits are great teachers.

Time Tabling: It is our policy to timetable two times in the day when the children eat at their desks. Before break the children are given time to eat in class and at lunch they are given 10 minutes to eat in class. We feel that eating properly at a table fosters a healthy attitude to food and eating.

Content of Lunches: Please pay attention to the content of the lunch as listed below. We hope to help children understand that it is important to eat well and also that eating is an enjoyable activity. We hope our content reflects this.
Lunches should contain a carbohydrate content such as sandwiches, bread roll etc. for slow release energy. The sandwich/bread roll content should be divided in 2 sections for the 2 eating times. Lunches should contain a healthy snack such as fruit, nuts, raisins, carrot sticks, cheese etc. Lunches may contain only 1 small treat such as 1 cereal based bar, a yogurt or milk based bar, a small bun or a small portion of biscuits. Lunches may never contain sweets, chocolate based bars, chewy bars, jelly, crisps or popcorn. If yogurt is taken to school children must have their own spoon. Parents may be contacted if the lunch is not balanced in content. Parents may also be contacted if their child cannot manage their lunch reasonably neatly.

Drinks: All drinks should be in reusable plastic bottles or beakers. Children should be able to open and close the plastic bottle so they can drink from it twice a day. Water, fruit drinks and diluted fruit drinks are allowed. All fizzy/carbonated drinks are banned. All cartons and drink bags are banned as they cannot be resealed when a fraction has been drunk.

Packing your child’s Lunch: Children are expected to eat some of the sandwich/bread content of their lunch at both eating times. Therefore, the sandwich/bread content should be divided in 2. Having eaten some of their carbohydrate/sandwich/bread content the children may then eat another section of their lunch. A resealable plastic bottle or beaker is the best system for your child to manage to drink twice during the day. Please be careful of packing too much food for your child to eat.

School and Home Monitoring of Lunches: There will be two specific times in the school day when children will be supervised eating in class. In order to ensure that parents know how much of their lunch children are eating, children will take home the remains of their lunches, if there are any, in their lunch boxes.
If children have foods or drinks that are not allowed the food will have to be given to the teacher. The food will be returned to the child or the parents after school.

All School Policies are available on our website www.strynaghsns.com