In accordance with the Food Standard Guidelines, we actively encourage the school community to have a balanced diet, offer a wide variety of foods from the four main food groups, use cooking methods that lead to a minimum destruction of nutrients, and limit the use of salt in cooking.

Lunch is the main meal of the day, and is provided as family service for children in Lower School and cafeteria style for children in Upper School. The lunch break is 60 minutes in length because we believe that it is very important to allow sufficient time in the middle of the day for pupils to eat, to unwind and to participate in the large number of lunch-time clubs and activities that run in conjunction with the meal-time.

Lunch is compulsory and included in the fee (for all bar Nursery children), because we believe it is important to foster the ethos of community eating. In addition, pupils are provided with morning and afternoon snacks, and snacks after fixtures.

‘Fussy eaters’ are actively encouraged to try various menu items and the catering staff responsible for this go out of their way to ensure they are actually eating the meals served. The frontline catering staff also make it their job to know the names of the majority of pupils they serve to help create a welcoming and caring family feel at meal times.

By offering a wide range of choices and using cooking methods, such as:

• Using less fat in cooking.
• Baking foods as opposed to frying.
• Using fats / oils high in polyunsaturated fats.
• Reducing sugar in recipes (particularly in snacks and puddings).
• Reducing salt in the cooking process.
• Increasing the use of food items containing fibre.
• Steaming potatoes & vegetables where appropriate.

Examples of how we ensure that all the food products and meals supplied are nutritionally sound include the following measures:

• Menus must include a portion of meat, fish or vegetarian protein each day; oily fish to be on the menu once every three weeks.
• Menus must include, daily, two or more portions of fruit and vegetables, with at least three different fruit and vegetable items each week.
• Menus must include a dessert containing 50% fruit twice a week, minimum.
• Home-crafted bread, with no added fat, must be made available every day.
• Salt is not made available on tables.
• Menus should not contain more than two deep fried products a week – chips will only be served once a week and on those days there will be other starchy foods available that are not deep fried.
• Wholegrain rice is used for the main course.
• A mix of whole-wheat and white pasta is used for pasta dishes.
• A non-dairy source of protein for vegetarian dishes is made available on a minimum of 3 days per week.
• Reduced sugar and salt in baked beans is offered twice within the 3 week menu cycle.

In recipes where it can be achieved, we try to reduce sugar by up to 25%. In other recipes, including cakes, tray bakes and certain sponges, we use brown sugar. Other ingredients are used to complement recipes with reduced sugar, e.g. cinnamon, vanilla extract, honey, sultanas and fruit.

Only water and milk are offered at morning break. Water is laid out at lunchtime and for afternoon snack. Drinking water is widely available throughout the school. It is allowed to be brought into classrooms and exam rooms in water bottles.

On special occasions, fruit drinks are served but care is taken to ensure sugar content is minimised.

We expect all pupils to eat school meals, and can only meet individual requirements that are based upon attested medical grounds.

The School is nut-free so the menus created are also free from nuts as an ingredient. Whenever possible the kitchen sources products that are not produced in a factory that contains nuts or those which may state that it contains traces of nuts. The catering department freshly prepare and cook much of the food from scratch each day.

Packed lunches are only permitted in special circumstances. Requests to the Head for these must be accompanied by a doctor’s letter. In order to protect children with severe nut allergies, packed lunches should contain ‘no nuts’.

If parents wish to bring a cake into the School for the child’s class, it is essential that they ensure that the cake is ‘no nuts’. It will be checked by the Catering Department before the cake is distributed. If advice is needed on what sort of cake to bring, parents should ask the Catering Manager – 020 7720 4091 extension 1212.

Parents of children who have allergies to any food product, or who have special dietary requirements, are asked to make this clear in the medical questionnaire which they complete when their child enters the School. They should inform the school at once if their son or daughter subsequently develops an intolerance to any food. The School Nurse and the Catering Manager are happy to see any parent who has concerns about their child’s medical condition, and to devise a special menu, where practical.

We devote time in both PSHE and Biology lessons to ensuring that pupils understand why a healthy diet is so important.

We support ethical buying, and we use locally grown, environmentally sustainable food wherever possible. We use as much fresh food as possible, with our menus linked to seasonal produce. We work with our Catering Team (provided by Chapter One) to make as much use as appropriate of red tractor, Leaf, natural food products and Fairtrade produce and to eliminate GM food and potentially harmful food additives. The fish we source is (bar salmon) certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). We ensure that our suppliers, local and national, are committed to providing best quality and value, with the highest standards of accredited health and safety. We expect them to show procedures covering full traceability of source through the supply chain, with comprehensive food labelling, supplying information on both allergens and nutritional data.