Liverpool school cooks take on the school dinner challenge
Around 90 school cooks have taken part in a six week training programme devised by LJMU for Liverpool City Council.
Forget fast food. Liverpool's primary schools are cooking up a culinary revolution to give their pupils mouth-watering mega-mouthfuls of healthy food.
Around 90 school cooks have taken part in a six week training programme devised by LJMU for Liverpool City Council. The training will help school cooks develop the skills they need to meet the new Government standards for school dinners, which become compulsory from September 2006. To mark the end of their course, all the cooks were set a culinary challenge. Working in teams, they had to select and cook dishes that best meet the new standards.
Suzanne Halsall, Business Manager for Catering Services at Liverpool City Council, plains: "The benefits of good school meals and providing pupils with a healthy balanced meal go beyond high quality catering. These new standards will help ensure that healthy eating is the norm in every Liverpool school."
The new national standards include a limit on the number of days schools can serve chips plus a ban on using poor quality meat. Schools will also have to use high quality poultry or oily fish on a regular basis and serve pupils a minimum of two portions of fruit and vegetables with every meal.
The LJMU course, the first stage of a new training regime for front line staff, includes sessions on kitchen skills, food preparation and healthy cooking practices. Healthy eating principles underpin everything on the course, from understanding the nutritional content of ingredients and trialling recipes that include more fruit and vegetables to trying out new kitchen equipment.
Jo Ives, Principal Lecturer from LJMU’s Centre of Tourism, Community and Food explains: "Over the years the need for schools cooks to prepare food from scratch in school kitchens has reduced significantly. Hopefully the introduction of the new standards and LJMU's training will develop the skills, confidence and motivation to support the Catering Services positive response to delivering the Government’s targets to their schools."
Suzanne Halsall agrees: "For the transformation in school catering to happen, catering staff need to be a valued part of their school communities. They will be the vital link in helping children change their attitudes towards healthy eating. This training will give them the skills they need to prepare healthy meals that not only meet the new nutritional standards but are also popular with the children - perhaps the most difficult challenge of all."
