Our meals are carefully developed to appeal to children and provide the perfect balance of essential nutrients – and to offer them the chance to try a few dishes they may not have tried before.

Your child can choose from two main meal options provided every day, each one accompanied by a vegetable choice, and including a daily vegetarian dish.

Jacket potatoes with an assortment of popular and tasty fillings are always available, too, served with an attractive side salad.

Additional salad and wholemeal bread is also on offer each day along with a dessert of the day, a selection of yoghurts, cheese and crackers and fresh fruit.

A range of cold drinks are also available.

Special dietary requirements

If your child has a special dietary requirement – such as diabetic, coeliac, low fat and dairy intolerances or a food allergy – we will be happy to plan and provide a school meal that meets your child’s needs.

We can also adapt menus to meet religious needs. Find out more about Allergies and special diets.

Highest standards

As a parent, you can be reassured that our menus meet – and exceed – national standards for school lunches. That’s because we understand how the right nutrients can positively affect a child’s mood, behaviour, health, growth and ability to concentrate in lessons. We also know how a well-balanced diet now helps to establish healthy eating habits for the future.

To maintain our high standards, we only use ingredients which are fully traceable and which come purely from local and regional suppliers. This not only reduces food miles, it also gives our chefs the freshest quality ingredients to work with.

We also demand the highest welfare standards. All of our eggs are free range and meet RSPCA Freedom Food standards, all fish is Marine Stewardship Approved (MSC), cocoa, sugar and bananas are guaranteed Fairtrade, and all meat and poultry meet the Red Tractor assured quality standard. We do not accept foods which are known to contain GM (genetically modified) foods, MRM (mechanically recovered meat), modified proteins, and specified flavourings and colourings.

Fun meal times

Our meals times can be great fun. We occasionally run themed events as a way of injecting a bit of laughter into lunchtime – with our catering team usually more than happy to get all dressed up for the occasion!

Special menus

We also put on special menus to celebrate key events like Chinese New Year, Children in Need, Halloween and, of course, Christmas.

The current charge for a school meal is £3.00 per day and a register is kept recording payments made and meals taken.  For your ease and convenience, parents can make lunch payments using credit or debit cards via our online payment system, School Gateway.  Please contact the school office for details on how to set up an account. Payment by cash or cheques (payable to Gateshead Council) is also accepted.

Pupils not wishing to eat a school meal can bring a packed lunch in a suitably sized container. For reasons of safety please don’t include hot food e.g. soup in flasks. For obvious reasons we strongly encourage parents to provide healthy meals for those staying for packed lunch.

Under the Government’s Universal Infant Free School Meals (UIFSM) scheme, children in Reception class, Year 1 and Year 2 automatically qualify for a free school meal.

Free School Meals

If you think you may be entitled to free meals, you can apply through Gateshead Council. Please note that even if you do not wish to take up free school meals, or if your child is receiving an infant free meal, the fact that you are entitled (and apply) brings more funding to the school. For further details on this, please follow the link below:

https://www.gateshead.gov.uk/article/7433/Free-school-meals

Packed Lunch Guidance

Introduction

To grow and stay healthy children need to eat a nutritionally well-balanced diet.  Whilst our preference is that children stay for school lunch, we recognise that packed lunches must also be an option for children at Fellside.

Schools are an influential setting and can contribute significantly to improving the health and well-being of pupils. Good nutrition in childhood can help to prevent a variety of health problems, both in the short term and later in life. There is increasing concern that many children are consuming too much fat, sugar and salt and too little fibre, fruit and vegetables.

Packed lunches can contribute to almost a third of a child’s weekly food intake and therefore need to be balanced and nutritious.

Aim

To ensure that packed lunches (brought in from home) reflect the new standards for school meals.

Rationale

The content of lunchboxes needs to reflect the requirement of schools to meet minimum food and nutrition standards for school meals. The contents of lunchboxes in some schools can be extremely unhealthy, recent audits of lunchboxes have shown that in the main they contain foods with high levels of fat, sugar and salt, and very few fruit and vegetables.

The short-term effects of unhealthy packed lunches and food intake can include poor growth, tooth decay, obesity, anaemia, constipation, poor concentration and behavioural problems which may have an impact on a child’s learning. The longer- term effects of a poor diet in childhood can be an increased risk of stroke, cancer, heart disease and diabetes in adulthood.

Children’s packed lunches should include items from the 5 main food groups;

1) Bread, Rice, Potatoes, Pasta. These starchy foods are a healthy source of energy. Packed lunches should include 2 or more portions e.g. pasta salad, sandwich.

2) Fruit and Vegetables. These foods provide vitamins, minerals and fibre. Lunches should include at least 1 portion of fruit and 1 portion of vegetables / salad, or more e.g. carrot/cucumber sticks, cherry tomatoes, a piece of fruit.

3) Milk and Dairy foods. These foods provide calcium for healthy bones and teeth. Include 1 portion at lunch e.g. yoghurt, fromage frais, milk.

4) Meat, Fish, Eggs, Beans. These foods provide protein for growth. Packed lunches should include 1 portion of these foods e.g. boiled egg as filling in sandwich, mixed bean salad.

5) Drinks – any drinks provided in lunch boxes should only include either plain water, milk (semi-skimmed), unsweetened fresh fruit juice, diluted fresh fruit juice, fruit or dairy based smoothies.

 Please support us by not including these items in a packed lunch

Foods and drinks high in fat and / or sugar It is important not to fill up on too many foods that are high in fat and / or sugar at the expense of other more nutritious foods. Limiting high fat and sugar foods will help protect young people from becoming overweight as well as helping prevent tooth decay, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

• Fizzy Pop/Fruit Shoots
• Sweets
• Chocolate bars.

A choice of only one of the following is recommended per day:

• A cake bar
• Packet of crisps
• Biscuit.

Waste and Disposal

The school will, within reason, send any uneaten packed lunch food items back home. The rationale for this is that parents can also monitor what their child has consumed during the day and then raise any concerns over their child’s food intake with the school.