Eden oversees rise in meal uptake

The schools - Highridge Infants and Bishopsworth Junior - have seen the highest rise in the number of children eating school meals in the city over the past year. And to mark the achievement the Lord Mayor of Bristol is hosting a celebratory dinner for pupils and catering staff. Eden managing director Simon James said:"Our priority is to offer and promote healthy eating for children and young people with a range of tasty menus. We take this responsibility very seriously and employ a registered nutritionist who analyses all of our menus and ensures that the meals we provide are packed full of essential nutrients. "We also have an ongoing programme of recipe development that ensures our meals meet all of the most recent Government Nutritional Standards. We are delighted that our commitment has resulted in such a dramatic increase in Bristol." Liz Fox, senior health promotion specialist at Bristol NHS Primary Care Trust, said: "To learn effectively and achieve their potential it's particularly important for pupils to have good quality meals that they enjoy. "Pupils need to be able to concentrate and to concentrate fully they need to eat well. We are delighted to support this campaign to increase the number of pupils eating healthy school food and would encourage all children to give school meals a try." Eden Foodservice, the education arm of Initial Catering Services, was awarded an eight-year contract worth £5 million in October 2007 to handle catering for 132 schools in the Bristol area, representing 30,000 children. The contractor took over from Bristol Council's Contract Service Team after the city council decided to outsource the service "to achieve increased efficiency and drive innovation". At the start of the contract Eden held a five-day training course for the dinner ladies to introduce them to on-site food preparation. As a result over 90% of meals are prepared from fresh food onsite whereas previously over 90% was pre-prepared or frozen. The meals have been marketed as part of the Million Meals initiative, a national campaign spearheaded by the School Food Trust, and leaflets and menus sent to all parents informing them of the change.