New standards on school dinners to cut down deep-fried food, sugar and pastry
A new set of standards has been launched for all food served in schools in England.
The government says the new guidelines are designed to make it "easier for school cooks to create imaginative, flexible and nutritious menus".
They will be mandatory in all maintained schools, as well as new academies and free schools.
The new standards include:
High fat, sugar and salt
Maximum two portions of deep-fried,batter-coated or breadcrumb-coated food each week
Maximum two portions containing pastry each week
No snacks except nuts, seeds, vegetables and fruit with no additives
No sweets, chocolate or chocolate-covered products
No salt can be added to food after it has been cooked
Fruit and vegetables
One or more portions of vegetables or salad as an accompaniment every day
One or more portions of fruit every day
A dessert containing at least 50% fruit two or more times a week
At least three different fruits and three different vegetables each week
Drinks
Fruit juice portions limited to 150mls
Added sugars or honey in other drinks restricted to 5%
Water promoted as the drink of choice
Other
Wholegrain foods favoured in place of refined carbohydrates
One or more starchy foods available each day
A portion of meat, poultry or non-dairy protein on three or more days each week
Bread with no added fat or oil available every day
Education Secretary Michael Gove says the new standards are "clear and concise" and will be less expensive for schools to enforce than previous guidelines.
DfE said previous standards, introduced between 2006 and 2009, were complicated and expensive to enforce.
According to officials, 90% of school cooks said the new rules were easier to implement than the old standards, with co-author Henry Dimbleby stating they could also allow more flexibility.
Susan Jebb, Professor of Diet and Population Health at University of Oxford said children "eat too much saturated fat, sugar and salt" and the new guidelines would help offer a more healthy variety.
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) welcomed the new standards, but said the fact that they were only enforcable in academies and free schools opening from this month meant large numbers of those existing free schools would only be required to sign up on a voluntary basis.
"This will significantly weaken the message that all schools should provide a healthy and balanced diet to all children," the union said in a statement.