A Unique Child: Nutrition - Party time

Birthdays and special celebrations are magical moments in children's lives and nursery settings look forward to embracing and celebrating these occasions with them. Food often is high on the list, with cakes and sweets the traditional food for children's birthdays, and fried food such as samosas, onion bhajis or potato latkes, the symbolic food for the religious festivals of Diwali or Hanukkah.

While these celebrations are an invaluable opportunity to celebrate cultural diversity, the foods typically contain high levels of sugar and fat. So whether you are planning a Christmas or Eid celebration, a child's birthday or a family social event, it is good practice to make sure that the food you offer reflects the healthy ethos of your setting.

MAKING IT CLEAR

Policies on birthday cakes and sweet food for celebrations vary from setting to setting. Some allow the parents to bring in a birthday cake for all to enjoy; some will allow the cake, do the candles and then send it home with the children; others bake a cake on-site; and some will come up with creative ways to make the child feel special that doesn't involve food - for example, a birthday hat or an imitation birthday cake with party games and savoury snacks and fruit platters.

Patricia Mucavele, who heads up the Children's Food Trust's Eat Better, Start Better programme, says that it is 'vital' that settings are clear about how they manage the constant flow of birthdays, religious festivals and other occasions throughout the year.

She explains, 'We all know that food and drinks served at celebrations and parties can often be high in saturated fat, sugar and salt - not the sort of fare that's good for children to have every day. So it's important to give information on how birthdays and other special occasions are celebrated in your food policy and your information to parents. Some parents might be disappointed initially when you ask them not to bring in a cake to share, but when you explain that every day could become a cake day if every child did this, they are normally very understanding.'

She suggests encouraging parents to bring in healthier food for birthdays, or non-food items like stickers instead of cakes or sweets. Similarly, for major religious festivals, she suggests finding healthier dishes to cook from sources such as the Children's Food Trust's forthcoming Let's Get Cooking at Home (www.letsgetcookingathome.org.uk) website, due to launch this autumn, or celebrating these events in different ways, 'with craft activities, songs and stories, decorations, playing special games or dressing up'.

LET'S CELEBRATE

It is important that children get the chance to celebrate special religious and cultural days, and food is one part of marking and understanding those occasions. By offering children a chance to try new flavours and tastes, they can learn about the world and to do some cooking.

At London Early Years Foundation Queensborough Nursery in Bayswater, London, an annual International Family Day provides the opportunity for children to taste dishes made by the parents of children attending.

Nursery manager Jean Hudson says, 'We hold it once a year as a social and fundraising event. Last year, we called it East Meets West. All the families bring in foods from their cultures to eat. There is a no-nut policy and everything has to be clearly labelled with the ingredients so the families can make their own choices. We have Lebanese food, Caribbean food, French cakes, Danish meat dishes, noodles dishes, English cream teas and Spanish olive cakes. It's a great chance for children to try out different flavours and tastes.

'At the nursery, we promote healthy eating and our chef will bake a birthday cake with the ingredients provided by the parents. We celebrate many of the festivals in our setting. We value the information that parents give us about their culture. For example, we always celebrate Chinese New Year and this is embedded in our parent-partnership programme. We use this festival to work with our dads and take them with their children on a Saturday trip to Chinatown with a dim sum lunch experience.

'We celebrate Christmas with the nativity play. Divali, Eid Mubarak, and Hanukkah are celebrated through displays, creative activities, drama and music. We're getting ready for Black History Month in October and are planning to take the children to V&A Museum of Childhood for the Afro Supa Hero exhibition.

'At these culture festivals, the children will taste and explore a wide range of foods from around the world. However, we are careful to ensure that on the rare occasions that we offer symbolic festival food, we choose relatively healthy options and we cook the food in healthy oils with no added salt.'

GETTING THE MESSAGE ACROSS

Other settings have moved away from providing any traditional or symbolic food at festivals or celebrations. Marie Eaton, on-site manager at Fun to Learn Nursery, a community nursery in central Luton, says, 'Historically, there has been a problem with tooth decay and obesity in Luton. We now focus on having fun and looking at the meanings behind festivals. At Eid, for example, the children can have their hands painted with henna; we listen to traditional music and we taste different fruits from around the world. At Easter, we have Easter egg hunts where the children find plastic eggs with stickers inside.

'For children's birthdays, parents are not allowed to bring in a cake or sweets. Instead, they are invited to bring in a pass-the-parcel and we sing songs and children wear a birthday hat. When we have parties, we offer fruit platters at snack time, or vegetable platters with sour cream dips to try.

'Some parents have resisted the celebrations policy in the past, particularly when it comes to birthdays, and have laid on the guilt factor, saying that this is the only chance their child will get to have a cake with their friends. But we've had to turn them away and be firm, stating that it is against our policy.

'It's taken a long time to establish our food policy, which we introduced eight years ago and it has only properly come together in the past two years. It has taken a lot of work to get parents on board. We have held open days talking about healthy eating and good foods to cook. We've played games where parents have to guess and measure out how much sugar is in a packet of raisins or a fruit shoot. We hold cooking classes and we have dentists and dietitians that come in to give advice and talk to the parents.'

MORE INFORMATION

• The Children's Food Trust offers a step-by-step guide to developing and using a food policy in your setting - download it at www.childrensfoodtrust.org.uk/eatbetterstartbetter

• The Caroline Walker Trust's Eating Well for Under 5s in Childcare gives practical and nutritional guidelines, including information on food for special occasions, www.cwt.org.uk.