Our School Meals
We offer school meals that are cooked on the premises by Anji Phipps who is our school cook. She has had been with us for 11 years and previously has had 9 years experience of outside catering. She understands children and is very aware of any allergy or dietary requirements they may have. Our 'Anji' cooked lunches are very popular as are her lunch bags for those who enjoy cold sandwich type meals. When she cooks the bread for the rolls the aroma just wafts arounds the school!
Anji has worked hard with the school to make sure that our children eat healthily and ensure our Healthy School Status
All her meals are cooked to strict HC3S specifications which are detailed below.
HC3S
Hampshire County Council Catering Services (HC3S), as the County Council’s in-house caterers, provides meals for 444 infant, junior, primary and special schools in Hampshire.
HC3S has been working to improve schools meals over the last few years and believe that Hampshire’s meals are among the best in the country. Improvements include:
- Reduction of additives in line with the Hyperactive Children’s Support Group recommendations
- Introduction of organic beef
- Adding the essential fatty acid Omega 3 to some of our fish products
- Providing homemade items on the menu (for example pizza, bread, puddings)
HC3S serves a full plate meal comprising of main item (meat or non-meat), carbohydrate (i.e. potatoes, rice, pasta), vegetables and offers a choice of dessert to endeavour to introduce children to a balanced meal. This means that every child has the opportunity to have the necessary calories, vitamins and nutrients (representing a third of their daily intake) every school day.
A vegetarian option is available every day and special diets (nut free, egg free, wheat and gluten free and dairy free) are also available for children with medically proven allergies. HC3S can also cater for children with a combination of these allergies so it should not be assumed that a child cannot have meal if, say, they are not able to eat eggs.
The new nutritional standards introduced on 1 September 2006 have limited the type of food that can be sold in schools with the view to reducing the amount of ‘junk’ food that children eat. This means that no confectionary, no bagged savoury snacks i.e. crisps and no fizzy drinks can be sold on school premises. Our healthy morning break offers instead, fresh fruit, milk, fruit juice, fresh bread rolls and organic raisins – far better than crisps!
The new standards also mean that children will have more opportunity to have fruit and vegetables. Now, school meals have to give children the opportunity of at least one portion of vegetable or salad a day and one portion of fruit. HC3S school meals offer vegetables and/or salad with each meal and a dessert option of fresh fruit every day.
In addition to our commitment to providing Hampshire’s children with excellent meals, HC3S is also trying to improve both children’s and parent’s ability and confidence in cooking by running ‘Cook & Eat’ courses around the county. Parents are invited to come along to a series of cooking lessons based on the school meal recipes.
Menus, questionnaires and other information is available on our website: www.myschoollunch.co.uk/hampshire and the menus are updated weekly to show the current daily choices.
More information is also available on www.hants.gov.uk/caterers. Alternatively telephone us on 023 8060 9388 or e-mail HC3S.Support@hants.gov.uk.
