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Balanced Diet for Children: Top Tips for Nurseries

25th November 2024

By Charlotte Stirling-Reed – The Baby & Child Nutritionist 

A balanced diet for children is so important for their growth, health and development. Nurseries play a vital role in providing nutritious meals and shaping children’s eating habits from a really young age. Many children eat the majority of their meals in a nursery setting 5 days a week, and this means that the food on offer needs to be healthy, nutritious and balanced, to ensure young children get all the energy and nutrients they need to grow and stay healthy. 

This blog from Zebedees and their consultant Nutritionist, Charlotte Stirling-Reed, will explain the importance of a balanced diet for children in a nursery setting, as well as how to offer a healthy and balanced diet and what it might look like over the nursery day.   

What is a “Balanced Diet”?  

A balanced diet for children means offering children foods from different food groups in order to meet their energy and nutrient needs. The main components of a balanced diet are: 

  • Starchy foods and wholegrains – these should be offered at lunch every day in a nursery setting – as they are important for offering energy, fibre and B vitamins to children – all of which are essential for growth.  

  • Fruits and Vegetables – these should be offered in variety and should be offered at every mealtime in a nursery setting. These are important for hydration, fibre and vitamins and minerals needed to keep the immune system and the digestive system working well.  

  • Protein and iron-rich foods – these should be offered for lunch each day at nursery - these help to provide important nutrients for growth, immunity and for providing our cells with oxygen.  

  • Dairy or dairy alternatives – these should be offered regularly at nursery as they provide little ones with protein, calcium and other important minerals for bone health and muscle growth.  

A balanced diet simply means offering a balance of foods from EACH of these food groups at most meal and snack times, to ensure a variety of the essential nutrients are consumed by small children (and adults) on a daily basis.  

The Benefits of a Balanced Diet for Children 

Ensuring a balanced diet for children in nurseries provides numerous benefits:

  • Help children get enough energy to grow, develop, and PLAY throughout the day. 

  • Ensure children get enough nutrients such as vitamins, minerals and fibre to help them stay healthy.  

  • Help them develop a healthy pattern of eating, which is often set in the early years and impacts future patterns of eating.  

  • Help them become familiar with eating a “balanced diet”, and we know children tend to accept what they are familiar with.  

  • Reduce future health problems later in life: Early healthy eating habits can reduce the risk of chronic diseases later in life, such as diabetes, risk of heart disease, and high blood pressure. 

  • Help support the immune system, helping children fight off illnesses more readily. 

  • Physical growth and development: Essential nutrients support physical growth and development, ensuring children reach their full potential. 

  • Cognitive function: Proper nutrition supports brain development, concentration and can enhance learning and academic performance. 

Tips to Plan a Balanced Diet for Children in Your Nursery 

Nurseries play a key role in offering children a well-balanced diet as they are in their care and consuming healthy food on a regular basis. The staff in nurseries are often role models to young children too, and children tend to copy what they see their role models do, as well as any language used around foods and the types of foods consumed.

Additionally, nurseries are a fantastic opportunity to teach children about the enjoyment of social mealtimes and lots of healthy messages around the foods we eat.  

When planning meals for little children within nurseries, you need to think about: 

  • Ensuring they are balanced 

  • The calorie requirements of young children 

  • Minimising levels of salt, sugars and saturated fats 

  • Following Government Guidelines on Early Years Nutrition 

  • Considering different dietary requirements 

  • Planning for seasonal produce 

  • Including a variety of foods from each of the food groups 

  • Children’s likes and dislikes 

  • Food safety  

 Ensuring they are balanced 

As mentioned above, this is key to ensuring that children are eating balanced meals with a variety of nutrients that they need every day! This means planning out the menu to include EACH of the key food groups for lunch and some snacks at the nursery every day.  

The calorie requirements of young children 

Children need high energy foods, but often have low appetites and small tummies. This means we need to pack in calories and nutrients into small amounts when creating meals for young children in a nursery setting, and take into account their portion sizes as well as potentially adapting portions as they age.  

Minimising levels of salt, sugar and saturated fats 

These are ingredients that are recommended to be limited somewhat in young children’s diets. In the UK, it’s recommended that children under 4 don’t have much in the way of added sugars and added salt and so this needs to be taken into account when building nursery menus.

Some sweetness and sugars are likely to be inevitable across the entire day e.g. in some breakfast cereals, fruit juice, spreads, breads and puddings, but this ideally needs to be minimal for young children. See our blog on Salt Recommendations for Toddlers to learn more.

Follow Government Guidelines on Early Years Nutrition 

The UK government provides examples of menus for early years settings and also nutrition guidelines for early years settings to follow. These should always be taken into account when building a meal plan at nurseries. Sometimes, a checklist based on the guidelines can be helpful to help you create new menus or even assess current menus. These guidelines help ensure children receive a balanced diet.  

Considering different dietary requirements 

When creating menus, it is essential to consider various dietary requirements, whether due to personal choice, allergies, or cultural preferences while ensuring all children receive adequate nutrition. Although it may be straightforward to remove certain foods, such as cheese or milk, for children who cannot consume dairy, it’s equally important to replace the lost nutrients to maintain a balanced meal. For instance, nurseries might need to provide fortified plant milk or dairy-free cheeses for children who are dairy-free. 

Planning for seasonal produce 

Planning menus around seasonal products offers numerous benefits. Nutritionally, seasonal fruits and vegetables are often fresher and more nutrient-dense, as they are harvested at their peak ripeness. Additionally, focusing on seasonal products can reduce the carbon footprint associated with long-distance transportation, promoting sustainability. By integrating seasonal foods into nursery menus, we can foster healthier eating habits, support local economies, and contribute to environmental conservation.That's why every nursery should offer at least 2 menus, a summer and winter menu

Including a variety of foods from each of the food groups 

By increasing the diversity of foods on offer in nursery settings, you can expose children to more foods, which builds their familiarity with a variety of textures and flavours and may increase their acceptance of more foods over time. It also may be beneficial for their gut health as diversity of the diet is one of the things that improves digestive health.

Lastly, it also means that children are able to consume a wider variety of nutrients across their nursery menus, and not only the same ones each day. For example, if only 5 different fruits or vegetables were used across the menus in one week, children would be exposed to less in the way of microbes, beneficial plant compounds, vitamins, and minerals than if they were exposed to 20 different fruits and veggies each week.  

Children’s likes and dislikes 

Although all children are different and are likely to have different food preferences, settings will need to ensure that they are offering meal options that are acceptable to the majority of children. This means including familiar items such as rice and pasta, bread, creamy sauces and familiar veggies such as broccoli. This doesn’t mean that you can’t experiment and offer a wider range of foods, but it’s always good to consider meals, recipes and foods that go down well with children. At Zebedees we take feedback from our nursery settings after each menu cycle, which allows us to really know what the children eating our meals enjoy.  

Food safety  

Food safety and food hygiene in nurseries are essential to protect young children from foodborne illnesses, which can be particularly severe for their developing immune systems. Ensuring food safety means following practices that prevent contamination and ensure that food is stored, prepared, and served in a hygienic manner. This includes proper handwashing, cooking food to the right temperatures, and keeping kitchen areas clean. By maintaining high food safety standards, nurseries can provide a safe and healthy environment for children to grow and thrive. 

Meal Structure Example for a balanced diet for Kids

Ideally, children in a nursery setting will be offered 2 main meals a day, 2 small snacks and potentially a pudding and a tea too (depending on the structure and opening hours of any particular setting). A routine around mealtimes can really help children to build up an appetite and to know when to expect food, which may help with their appetite for meals.  

  • Breakfast: e.g. porridge, wholegrain, low-sugar cereals and toast and topping. This should come alongside some freshly chopped fruits and ideally some protein, e.g. milk and dairy, eggs, nut butter, and ground seeds, if possible.  

Breakfast helps to ensure children have some energy first thing in the morning and is likely to help improve their concentration and behaviours as well as allows them to top up on important nutrients such as protein, fats, vitamins and minerals and fibre.

  • Snack 1: Helps to top up energy and nutrients in-between meals and gives another opportunity for children to consume foods. A healthy snack also helps keep hunger at bay until lunch. Here are some ideas: e.g. crackers/oatcakes and spread with some veggie fingers. Pitta bread sticks and a dip. A veggie muffin with some quartered grapes. Toast and topping. Yogurt, oats and berries. Avoid snack that are high in saturated fat.  

  • Lunch: Any balanced meal which ticks off most of the food groups above. E.g. macaroni and cheese with veggies, a vegetarian korma with chickpeas, pasta with a bolognaise sauce, soup and bread with some hummus, salmon with potatoes and veggies. This might be many children’s main meal of the day, and in many cases, their only hot meal. This is why nursery meals are so important and why they should include food that is a good source of proteins and also provides calories and nutrients.  

  • Pudding: In many nursery settings, lunch may be followed by pudding. It’s important that this is another opportunity for children to also access nutrients, so it should be based on fruits/veggies and or dairy/proteins, and still be low in added sugars, ideally. This might be fruit crumble and low sugar custard, cheese and crackers with veggie sticks, beetroot brownies, or yogurt and fruits, for example.  

  • Snack 2 or Afternoon Tea: Must include a healthy choice of food and drinks. It helps to top up nutrient intakes and continues to offer a balanced diet to children. E.g., mini sandwiches with fillings, quiches, and veggie sticks. 

Portion Sizes at nurseries 

There are some recommendations around “portion sizes” for children at a nursery settings. However, these are loose recommendations and are more useful to take as “serving suggestions”, as all children will have very different appetites when it comes to food. There is unlikely to be a “one size fits all” portion for any child in nursery, some eat a lot, and others will more likely graze on the food on offer.  

For detailed guidelines, refer to resources like this balance diet sheet for children.

Closing thoughts

In conclusion, it’s so critical that nurseries offer opportunities for children to eat a balanced diet and to consume many of the vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients that they need each day. Nurseries play a pivotal role in shaping children's eating habits and providing them with nutritious meals.

Seeking a nursery caterer for balanced, nutritious meals?  

At Zebedees, we’ve been providing fresh, delicious meals to nurseries for years. Explore our menus today and see how we can support your nurseries mealtime! 

Check out our menus 

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