Special report – Healthy meals on a budget

With the Office for National Statistics stating inflation is at its highest point for 30 years, all our pockets are taking a hit. Many business sectors are affected, with nurseries and childminders feeling the squeeze in some part due to the rising cost of food. According to The Food Foundation’s January food prices tracking, vegetables are now 2.3 per cent higher than they were pre-pandemic and the cost of fruit has increased by almost 5 per cent during the same period.

This is particularly worrying in relation to families already juggling low incomes; food can be seen as the obvious place to make savings. With this in mind it is becoming increasingly important for pre-school settings to supply healthy, nutritious meals to children in their care, while also finding ways to balance their food budgets.

So how can you produce menus that reduce waste and enable you to accurately cost your meals without compromising on taste, presentation or nutritional quality?

IT’S ALL ABOUT PLANNING…

Everyone has heard of cooks so proficient in their job they never need to use a recipe, but from a costings point of view, it is a case of the more information, the better.

A priority is to carefully plan out menus and recipes. Menus usually work most efficiently when they are rotated every three to four weeks, with seasonal changes two to four times a year.

Where menus are flexible, it is possible to take advantage of special offers. For example, shepherd’s pie can be made from a range of different meats, so this can be kept flexible to take advantage of best deals, or you could swap this for a vegetarian variety. Veg on your menu can be included as ‘seasonal vegetables’, allowing you to buy in season and take advantage of better prices, and often better quality too.

Your recipes will be your main tool in costing a menu as it will allow you to work out the amount of meals you can get from a specific amount of ingredients. By using a portion-controlled recipe, you will be able to produce the right amount of food for the right number of children and cut down on waste. First Steps Nutrition Trust suggests using standardised portion sizes, and offers guides on its website (see More information).

PURCHASE WISELY

Have you ever considered negotiating with food suppliers to get yourself a better deal? If you’re a single independent nursery, you could approach other nurseries to give you some added negotiating power, sharing orders direct from farms or other local suppliers.

By working co-operatively with other settings to buy in bulk, it can be possible to achieve discounts of up to 25 per cent. There are also wide variations in food costs at high street supermarkets. According to Which?, Lidl was the cheapest supermarket in January 2022.

Which? compared prices of a basket of 23 items every day of the month and found that, on average, shoppers would have paid £24.78 at Lidl. It beat rival discounter Aldi by just 59p. Meanwhile, the most expensive supermarket, Waitrose, was more than £9 pricier than Lidl – so worth shopping around.

BENEFITS OF OUTSOURCING

If you are tempted to pass meal arrangements over to a third party – including menu compiling, sourcing and buying, accommodating special diets and managing waste – that is where outside caterers come in. If you do consider this option, be sure to do some extensive background checking on any companies you are interested in before giving them the go-ahead. It is a good idea to use a company recommended by another nursery that feels happy with the consistent quality of food, reliable time-keeping and pricing.

It is also important to check the credentials of chefs preparing the food and the company’s health and safety credentials, while requesting a taster session for staff, parents and children, so you get sufficient feedback before you commit.

BUDGETING FOR SMALLER SETTINGS

Many childminders and small settings may not be able to take full advantage of bulk buying and batch freezing as they don’t have the storage space and have too few children to consider outsourcing.

At Pebbles Childcare, a childminder based in Worthing, West Sussex, menus work on a three-week, seasonal basis. Children are involved in creating them, with winter and summer menus incorporating seasonal produce that children help to forage and source during the summer. Pebbles also makes use of its local Pick Your Own farm.

Bridget Brown (pictured), who runs Pebbles with friend Chloe Webster, explains, ‘As our menu is all home cooked from scratch, we’ve realised that you don’t need to buy perfectly formed fruit and veg. The children aren’t going to notice that their carrot and coriander soup is made using “wonky” carrots!

‘Swapping to imperfect-shaped fruit and veg has contributed to a small saving in the weekly food shop. Swapping certain cuts of meat has also helped reduce costs without compromising on taste, as well as buying supermarket own-brand store cupboard essentials such as rice, pasta and tinned tomatoes. We are firm believers that a healthy menu doesn’t need to cost the earth!’

She adds, ‘We cater for all dietary requirements, and find that batch-cooking vegan or gluten/dairy-free alternatives ensures children’s dietary requirements are met, while also being cost-effective. To reduce food waste, we also freeze leftover meals.’

For Pebbles, planning is key. ‘Our children recently had fun with a fish finger cooking activity that was totally spontaneous as we had planned for a totally different activity,’ says Bridget. ‘If I’d planned this activity, I would have bought frozen fillets, or bought fresh from the supermarket. However, the opportunity to speak to the man who had caught the fish, watch him fillet it and prepare it for us outweighed the extra expense. We have a simple budget, and where we spend more on one day, we simply spend less the next.’

‘NUTRITION COMES FIRST’

Sean Cowden is chef trainer at London Early years Foundation’s Chef Academy. He says, ‘These are definitely challenging times, especially as the selection of produce is not always as wide when looking at cost-effectiveness. Even so, nutrition comes first, and we teach the importance of looking at the micro/macro nutrients of produce, so we advise going for something like broccoli, which provides so many vitamins and minerals.’

While batch cooking can help save money, Sean urges caution with bulk buying – ‘as you can easily end up with food past its use-by date. It’s better to keep minimal stock in the kitchen so you can see what you have – there’s no point hoarding food.

‘Special dietary requirements can pose a bit of a challenge, but you just need to think about what is being removed from a recipe, then replace it with something from the same food group, such as swapping meat for beans and pulses. This doesn’t have to become more expensive though, although there is more to think about; we cover this at the academy in our module on how to adapt foods to make them healthier.

‘We also cover a lot of ground on sustainability subjects including portion sizes, tracking wastage, and menu planning and budgeting.’

KITCHEN SUSTAINABILITY

At Tops Day Nurseries, founder and managing director Cheryl Hadland reports that the group’s settings have started to grow their own herbs and vegetables with the children.

‘These include carrots, tomatoes, runner beans, sweetcorn and pumpkin,’ she says. ‘And this means children can sample their home-grown produce during snack and meal times. We’re also looking into getting polytunnels, but at present they’re made from single-use plastic, which doesn’t fit in with our ethos. However, Peter, our catering manager, has been assured that in the next few years, companies will be producing recyclable ones.’

According to Cheryl, menus are produced seasonally by the group’s ‘amazing’ core team of chefs, located at Tops Wimborne in Dorset.

‘They sit down and brainstorm dishes together,’ she says. ‘When they create the menus they will ensure that they are using produce that is both seasonal and at its best from the UK where possible. By doing this they can ensure that the produce they are using is the very best for the price. Throughout Tops we try to encourage healthy eating and so our chefs will always look to produce nutritionally balanced dishes. They do this by using a platform called saffron, which gives them a nutritional overview of the dishes they create.’

The kitchens at Tops are all predominantly electric, reducing the use of fossil fuels. ‘Our kitchen teams are very fortunate to work with outstanding equipment – particularly from Rational, a sustainable supplier,’ explains Cheryl.

Tops’ kitchen fridges are all eco-friendly, and able to store more food efficiently. Increasing kitchen efficiency goes hand-in-hand with lowering its carbon footprint.

Cheryl says, ‘There are lots of other changes we’ve made within our kitchens. These can be the smallest of things such as eliminating cling film, to bigger changes such as providing new and sustainable equipment.

‘However, in any kitchen the biggest difference you can make is through careful planning and menu development. By working closely with suppliers, reducing wastage, educating children and focusing on seasonality, we can create exciting and vibrant dishes that will lower our carbon footprint and reduce the impact of food production on the planet.’

LEYF – making the best of the budget

Thomas Abrams is LEYF Academy’s project lead and explains how their course incorporates budgeting for healthy meals.

‘There is a focus on affordability and good budgeting throughout the course. We want LEYF and non-LEYF chefs to know how they can make the best use of their budgets to bring healthy food and the right range of nutrients to children.

‘Our module on portion sizes focuses on providing the right amount of various foods for children of different ages, and tracking, reducing and eventually eliminating wastage, while our module on menu planning focuses on budgeting.

‘We encourage chefs to look at their menus and consider not just the nutrients and food groups children are given over a given week, but where the ingredients are coming from and the relative price of these ingredients. Chefs are also taught tips for not over-ordering and making the best use of the ingredients they have.’

Early Years Chef Academy is now opening enrolment to all nurseries and chefs working with under-sevens.

• For more information: https://leyf.org.uk/chef-academy

Apetito – 200 meal options

Simon Myatt is divisional manager of apetito’s nurseries division. Apetito is a tailored meal delivery service providing single-portion frozen meals to nurseries.

Simon says, ‘At apetito we are passionate about supporting the sector and our customers, ensuring children receive nutritious, healthy meals.

‘We provide more than 200 different meal options for nurseries to choose from, our online ordering system ensures the meals consist of protein, carbohydrates and vegetables. It’s completely flexible, allowing nursery to make changes weekly. Our food is delivered free of charge, and because it’s frozen, the team won’t need to cook anything they don’t need. This is fantastic with fluctuating daily numbers due to Covid cases – reducing waste and cost.

‘Our nursery meals do not require any cooking skills from nursery staff, which is vital when you’re running a nursery with a skeleton team. We can quickly train staff to prepare our food safely.

‘In line with growing demand for plant-based meals, we have a wide selection of more than 30 vegetarian and vegan meals in our range, all specially created by our chefs, and which are packed with flavour as well as being nutritious.

‘When it comes to selecting choice, we offer an online system which couldn’t be easier to manage, ensuring that nurseries can order what they want, when they want it. Nurseries simply search for their preferred meals on the menu planning tool, view the nutritional and allergen information and click to order. The system even suggests popular combinations.’

MORE INFORMATION

• EYNP: https://www.eynpartnership.org
• First Steps Nutrition Trust: https://bit.ly/3gWIQ4t
• Children’s Food Trust: https://bit.ly/3uEklkq
• Which?: https://bit.ly/3GDk7fP