Just launched - The Early Years Nutrition Hub

3rd February 2021 All Posts Early Years Foundation Stage

Just launched – The Early Years Nutrition Hub

In keeping with Children’s Mental Health Week, we are excited to launch a brand new dedicated resource hub for Early Years Practitioners…

The Early Years Nutrition Hub

There’s lots of confusing, contradictory and often misplaced advice in the world of Early Years nutrition so we’ve collaborated with some of the leading Early Years Nutrition Experts to bring you trusted nutritional advice. This includes access to free resources such as videos, ebooks, blogs and tips, designed to help you and your setting stay informed about child nutrition and its impact on mental health.

According to the Mental Health Foundation, mental health problems affect about 1 in 10 children and young people.

The impact food has on our mental health can be easily overlooked but it plays a vital role in child development. If a child isn’t equipped with the internal biology of nutrients, they may find any group or educational environment confusing and stressful.

Early years settings provide the perfect opportunity to encourage young children to eat well and learn about food, both in the nursery and at home. This not only helps protect their health while young but also sets solid foundations for their future health and wellbeing.

Meet the Experts behind the hub

Let us introduce you to Julieta Matayoshi, Early Years nutrition consultant at The Professional Nursery Kitchen (TPNK), and Louise Mercieca, a nutritional therapist, owner of The Health Kick and author who is working with TPNK to improve its offering.

We asked them for their best advice on Early Years Nutrition, catch up on the 10 point Q&A on the hub!

Communicating with parents to improve child nutrition

Early Years practitioners can follow these simple steps to engage parents in enhancing food and mealtimes both at the setting and at home too.

Provide regular updates on menus and new dishes

Some settings may print off hard copies of weekly menus for children to take home, or spend time manually emailing parents a report of what their child has eaten in the day. With ParentZone you can update your meal choices in just a couple of clicks. Through ParentZone, nurseries can keep parents up to date, sending photos and updates via the app. Meals can be logged quickly and even bulk uploaded for multiple children, so your parents will know exactly what their child has eaten during their day and whether they had extra portions or tried something new. Parents can even add comments to feedback on what you have posted and you can have conversations to help improve their child’s nutrition.