Greenkiddie is Launching Close2Nature Campaign for Better Children’s Health and Well-Being at Nurseries

Over 70% of parents believe kids tend to get more infections when hygiene in the nursery is poor, but only 7% claim hygiene in their child’s nursery is outstanding. These are some of the results revealed in a recent parents’ survey, run by GreenKiddie.co.uk. The survey is part of GreenKiddie’s national campaign “Close2Nature” for better children’s health and well-being in nurseries. Close2Nature campaign aims to provide easy-to-use tips and advice for daycare providers and help them adopt our eco-friendly strategy for their premises in order to help with improving children’s health.

For this campaign GreenKiddie is partnering with Change4Life initiative run by the Department of Health, and focuses on 5 main areas:

• Provide better food and nutrition at nurseries
• Reduce toxics in the daycare premises
• Help children stay active
• Improve hygiene in daycare premises
• Help nurseries become more eco-friendly

There are over 850,000 children under 5 years of age in the UK attending either part-time or full-time daycare (DCSN, 2009). This means that nurseries’ environment plays crucial role for children’s health. Making nurseries more eco-friendly and encouraging them to reduce chemicals and toxics at their premises will promote better baby and children’s health and well-being, reducing the infections and straightening their immunity.”

The survey, based on the 514 parents’ replies, reveals that 18% of kids in nurseries are not having their 5 a day portions of fruits and vegetables, based on food being served at the nursery. Fish, helping children’s brain development, is being served on a weekly basis in only half of the nurseries, and 17% of kids are not being served the extremely important for kids’ growth high in protein food like meat and eggs. Some 15% of nurseries provide kids with very unsatisfactory amount of milk and diary products during their 10-hour stay at the premises, so kids are not able to get the calcium they need for this age. As little as 2 out of 100 nurseries serve organic food in every meal, where 15% of nurseries have never sourced organic produce for the kids. Home-made food has never been served to every tenth nursery, and in these cases processed food is what kids eat on a regular basis. Every third nursery adds sugar and/or salt in kids’ food, and only 4% follow the guidelines for avoiding salt in cooking for kids under 3-years old.

The eco-friendly efforts are outstanding in only 3 out of 100 nurseries, and are qualified as poor and unsatisfactory in 15% of cases. It looks like great percentage of nurseries are doing great when it comes to recycling, reusing and using eco-friendly craft-materials (42%), although improvement others is needed. When it comes to soaps, washing powders and cleaning materials about 20% will not even try to be eco-friendly. Most of the above soaps, cleaning sprays and washing powders contain harsh chemicals which not only reflect the environment, but are also toxic and irritating for the sensitive kids’ skin. Around the same percent of nurseries (20-25%) are not making any efforts to use BPA-Free baby/kids food equipment, biodegradable or cloth nappies (although in most of them parents are advised to provide nappies in their choice). About the same percent of nursery staff are willing to “go green”, but don’t seem to have enough information and knowledge on how to do that, according to parents.

1 Comment February 3, 2010

BETTER NURSERY FOOD CAMPAIGN HITS FACEBOOK! GreenKiddie supports the campaign and calls on nurseries and government to action

The Better Nursery Food Now Campaign, which calls on the Government to implement nutritional standards for nursery school food, has now launched a Facebook campaign to spread the word and engage mums and dads in supporting. The campaign is being run and promoted by The Soil Association and Organix, the baby and toddler food company.

The Better Nursery Food Campaign aims to increase the pressure on Government by highlighting examples of nurseries where parents are dissatisfied with the nutritional standards of nursery food. Whether it’s a nursery serving junk food, or food with artificial additives and e-numbers, or poor food generally, we are asking parents and nursery workers to post their experiences on the Facebook page and sign the petition to take to government.

The experiences from mums and dads will enable the Better Nursery Food Now campaigns team to step up the pressure on Government to put in place nutritional standards that will cover all nurseries, guaranteeing better food in nurseries.

Just to remind you that, according to the report Georgie Porgie Pudding and Pie – exposing the truth about nursery food:

• There are no clear nutritional standards for UK nurseries.
• Some nurseries spend as little as 25p per meal, per child.
• Colourings and additives, not allowed in manufactured foods for children, were regularly being permitted in nurseries.
• Foods banned or restricted in primary and secondary schools – like chips, sweets and chocolate – are still regularly served in nurseries.
• No Government Department was willing to take responsibility for the quality and monitoring of nursery food.

BBC 1 Panorama programme on Monday 25 January at 8.30pm will be investigating “What Is Really In Our Kid’s Food”. The programme has discovered that one in five children starts school already overweight and, according to the latest research, children who are fat by five are likely to stay that way. Shelley Jofre investigates the food being dished up to pre-schoolers at nurseries and at home. There’s a rapidly growing market in ready meals specifically for toddlers, but are they really a healthy option? The programme looks behind the marketing claims

Leave a Comment January 20, 2010