Our Food Philosophy

Our work with the ASSET Arrows made it clear - children want a good food education so that they are empowered to make healthy choices. And they want those choices to be available when they have their lunch at school.

We are really pleased to see that the government is updating the School Food Standards from September 2026 - moving toward less fried and processed foods high in salt and sugar, and more whole grains, fruit, vegetables and legumes.

Our ASSET mission is to empower children to create a more compassionate, equitable and sustainable world. So we ensure that each day they can choose a planet plate - meat free wholesome meals with a focus on vegetables and legumes, as suggested by the Lancet's planetary health diet.

Where we provide meat, dairy and eggs, we ensure these are sourced from farms with higher welfare standards, our roast meat is real unprocessed meat, and cheese is real, unprocessed cheese.

We believe that the lunchtime experience should be inclusive, so we've created a menu for September 2026 that enables children to eat together regardless of allergies, special diets and medical needs. We understand that our current food environment and SEND needs can mean that children often favour a "beige diet", and can be reluctant to try new foods. We are working with TasteEd and Public Health Suffolk to ensure that children can be exposed to new taste experiences in a safe, un-pressured way - balancing their needs with the hope that in adulthood they can confidently eat a wide and healthy diet that will enable them to thrive. We work with parents of children with Arfid who need a safe repetitive diet of plain foods to ensure that they can eat while at school.

In 2026/27 we will be supported by School Food Matters and Chefs in Schools to achieve excellence in food provision and education - from the kitchen to the classroom.

This has been a relatively new journey for us - starting by listening to our children through the ASSET Arrows food project, and then taking our school meals in house after years of contracting out. Every parent knows it's not easy to encourage children to eat well, when the food environment makes so much noise about highly processed, heavily marketed food. But we are deeply committed to learning how to achieve school food excellence, and to sharing our learning with other educators so that every Suffolk child can have an amazing school food experience. That's why we are hosting the Suffolk School Food Event, alongside many of the organisations who have helped us.

In 2026-27 we also turn our attention to the environmental impact of food - starting with the reduction of single use plastics. Many of our schools will be asking parents who choose to send packed lunches to look at alternatives to food items wrapped in unrecyclable plastic wrappers, and we'll be asking suppliers to look at where they can minimise use of plastic that often ends up in landfill or water systems.

"We really appreciate all of the brilliant work you are doing to ensure healthy, nutritious meals for our children. THANK YOU!" Parent, Bungay Primary School

"I would love for the meals to be accessible and inclusive to my child. Just because he has a medical need should not mean he misses out on something he is entitled to." Parent, Castle Hill Primary

"I love that it is handled in house and the design work, and effort from the children that went into it is fantastic! I love how children were involved from the beginning and the design, and developed the cookbook. Everyone involved should be very proud." Parent, Cliff Lane Primary