Jul 08 2010
School Food Trust survey reveals increased uptake in school lunches – MEND responds
Paul Sacher, Research Director at MEND, a social enterprise that provides free healthy lifestyle programmes for families, welcomes the increased uptake in school lunches highlighted in The annual survey of school lunch take up for the 2009-10 year, published today by the School Food Trust and the Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA), but warns that we must now look past the school gate. He said:
“Providing healthy school lunches is vital if we are to be a nation that prioritises our children’s health. The recent revolution in school food, with Jamie Oliver at the helm, has served to vastly improve the quality of food that is served to school children.
“With one in three British children overweight or obese, making sure all children have access to a healthy meal at least once a day is an important step in the right direction but not the whole solution. You can tell people to eat healthily all you like but until they decide to do it for themselves, no long-term benefits will result. We now need to look past the school gate and provide families with the behaviour change tools and practical support they need to make their own healthy choices at home, through proven, cost-effective initiatives such as the MEND Programme.”
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Notes to Editor:
For media enquiries regarding MEND please contact: Claire Nevill or Lucy Hannagan on 020 7231 7225 or claire.nevill@mendcentral.org / lucy.hannagan@mendcentral.org. For out-of-hours enquiries please call 07872 506996.
About MEND
· MEND (Mind, Exercise, Nutrition...Do it!) is a social enterprise that runs free healthy lifestyle programmes for two – 13 year olds and their families
· The MEND Programme was devised by Great Ormond Street Hospital and the University College London’s Institute of Child Health
· The MEND Programme is run in over 350 sites across the UK per term and has helped over 17,000 families
· MEND’s healthy lifestyle programmes are developed and tested by obesity specialists for delivery by a range of public and private sector partners.
· MEND is a National Third Sector Partner of the Department of Health’s Change4Life campaign.
