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School Nutrition
Schools are an ideal place for children to learn about and practice good nutrition. The classroom, and the whole school environment itself, provides a wonderful opportunity to make an impact on a childs health. Providing a supportive healthy eating environment makes it easier for students to make healthy food choices and to develop healthy behaviours that they will carry into adulthood.
In Prince Edward Island, rates of obesity and preventable nutrition related diseases like heart disease, cancer and diabetes are higher than in many other areas of Canada. It is therefore very important to help children establish healthy eating habits by making healthy choices available and by educating children about the importance of healthy eating. Nutrition policies at school are one way to provide PEI children and youth with opportunities to develop life long healthy eating habits.
PEI School Breakfast/Snack Programs
Coming Soon!
Schools play an important role in promoting healthy eating because:
- All children and youth can be reached
- Students eat approximately 40% daily food intake at school
- Parents can be reached through schools
- Role models, like teachers and coaches, can have a powerful influence on children
School Spotlight
There are many wonderful healthy eating initiatives happening at schools across PEI. In an effort to capture these stories and share them with others, the Healthy Eating Alliance has invited schools to share their nutrition success stories with us so we can compile the stories and add them to our online story bank. To help you navigate through the stories, we’ve assigned each story to a category. Be sure to check back often as new stories will be added as we receive them.
School Story Bank Coming Soon
We want your success stories!!
If you have a nutrition success story that you would like to share with us and have featured on our website, please contact Shannon Ochsner at 902-620-3881 or download the Success Story Template and fax back to us at 368-4548. Stories can relate to the following:
- Breakfast Programs
- Classroom Initiatives
- Fundraising
- Healthy Lunches
- Healthy Snacking
- Student Involvement
- Volunteer Management
School: Birchwood Intermediate School
Contact: John Michael Murphy
Activity: Cobra's Snack Shack
Process: On a daily basis, the canteen provides healthy snacks for students and staff of Birchwood school. Food inventory, food preparation, selling and clean-up usually takes one hour. Students prepare the foods in the Home Ec classroom each day. Food sold include juice boxes, carrot & celery bags with dip, smoothies, cheese strings, yogurt, yogurt tubes trail mix (contains pretzels, whole wheat penguin crackers, dried cranberries, strawberries, pineapple, raisins, apricots, banana chips and milk chocolate bits). The students are making the smoothie and snacks themselves and selling them out of the Home Ec room.
People Involved: Birchwood students and one teacher.
Key Results: To build community and confidence in the students while working to provide healthy food options in the school
Keys to Success: Consistency, support, modeling, reviewing sale flyers, organization, patience, reviewing goals. Challenges: Motivation, keeping food items well stocked, and waste from unsold foods
Years of Implementation: In it's second year
Useful Resources
The School Healthy Eating Toolkit
The School Healthy Eating Toolkit is a healthy eating resource and policy implementation guide for PEI schools. It was developed to assist teachers, administrators and school personnel with the implementation of a School Nutrition Policy. Sections in the Toolkit correspond to key elements in the school nutrition policies: healthy fundraising alternatives; safe food handling; peanut alternatives; microwave safety; school nutrition program ideas and sample resources and lesson plans to help schools engage students in nutrition education activities. The Toolkit also includes a copy of the policy, a user-friendly description of the policy suitable for distribution to parents, and a “Frequently Asked Questions” section.
Smart Eating Guide Poster (PDF)
The Smart Eating Guide is a food list poster that compliments the School Nutrition Policy. The food list poster places foods into three categories: foods to serve most often, foods to serve sometimes, or foods to serve least often. A large scale poster has been developed for each school in the province to display in the food service area or common gathering place. These posters are intended to educate students and school staff about healthy food choices and to inform them that their school has a School Nutrition Policy. Posters were delivered to most schools during the winter months of 2010.
SNAC (Student Nutrition Action Committee) Newsbites are newsletters that were developed for intermediate/senior high school staff and SNAC teams to provide a means to share success stories related to promoting healthy eating initiatives at school and to inform schools about the new school nutrition policy for all grade levels.
Grade One Orientation Handout (PDF)
This two page handout is for school administrators to provide to parents of new students at kindergarten and/or grade one orientation night. This handout introduces the Healthy Eating Alliance, the School Nutrition Policy and it provides parents with some healthy eating tips around packing a healthy lunch.
Healthy Eating Tips for School Newsletters (PDF)
Monthly healthy eating tips are developed annually by the Healthy Eating Alliance for elementary/consolidated schools to include in school newsletters. One tip for each month of the school year is prepared and all 10 tips are circulated to schools at the beginning of the school year.
The 101 Healthy Eating Tips were developed by the Healthy Eating Alliance and circulated to intermediate and senior high schools to assist them in communicating healthy eating messages through morning announcements, bulletin boards, etc.
For more healthy eating information, activities and resources please go to our resources page, www.healthyeatingpei.ca/resources.php.