Taste of healthy living for city schoolchildren

Published on Saturday 12 May 2007 13:13

YOUNGSTERS at The Edinburgh Academy Junior School are to hold a special week focused on eating and living healthily.

The independent school's second Focus on Health Week will cover school meals and snacks, as well as classroom and sporting activities.

Each day there will be a different activity for different age groups in the school kitchen starting with fruit smoothie-making for the nursery, P1 and P2 classes.

Pupils from P3 will be doing mini-circuits of press-ups, parallel jumps and burpees every day, while other children will be keeping food diaries, watching a Ready, Steady, Cook demonstration, and comparing diets between wartime years and the present day

Headteacher Caroline Bashford said: "Although our children generally have very good diets, they are still prone to peer pressure and other external pressures in terms of what they choose to eat.

"We cannot just assume that our children necessarily have a healthy diet, nor understand what is meant by this and that how what they eat impacts on what happens in the classroom and also on the sports field.

"It is very important that they learn to make the right choices and aim for a healthy and balanced diet. Also, the social context is very important to promote - the importance of good table manners and conversation. Even our three and four-year-old boys and girls sit down at a properly set table."