Over 2.5 million children from more than 7,200 nursery, primary and secondary schools across the UK are participating this year’s British Nutrition Foundation’s (BNF) Healthy Eating Week. HRH The Princess Royal will officially launch the week’s events on 1 June.
Roy Ballam, education programme manager at the BNF, said: “Healthy Eating Week goes from strength to strength and this year we have 1 million more children taking part than ever before. This represents around 24 percent of all school aged children and is a huge and very exciting achievement, demonstrating how much UK schools appreciate and value the learning opportunities that the week offers their students.”
Healthy Eating Week has been developed by BNF to increase knowledge and understanding of healthy eating, cooking and food provenance, and the benefits of physical activity among children and young people of all ages. Free schools resources, including food cards, games and activities, have been made available to support teachers as they plan activities based around the week’s themes. This year schools are also being set five health challenges, designed to engage children in thinking about food and healthy eating and to help motivate positive behaviour change. The challenge themes are: have breakfast, have 5 a day, drink plenty, get active and try something new.
Research among participating school children and their teachers is currently being conducted by BNF, and will examine eating behaviour and knowledge in the context of mealtime occasions. The results will be released on 1 June.
