The Health Education Trust and Jeanette Orrey's 'Dinner Lady Menu Service'

Deliver menu flexibility and maintain compliance with the nutrient-based standards.

Introduction

The Health Education Trust (HET) is a United Kingdom (UK) registered charity, formed to promote the development of health education for young people. Operated by independent professionals with expertise in, health education, teaching, catering, public health nutrition and dietetics, HET is dedicated to initiating and supporting work with children and young adults to encourage the growth in healthy lifestyles. Jeanette Orrey is one of the UK’s most well-known dinner ladies and has over 20 years experience of school food catering.
In partnership with Jeanette Orrey, HET has developed the ‘Dinner Lady Menu Service’. This partnership offers a range of nutrition analysis and support services to primary, secondary and special schools that allows a tailored approach to meeting and maintaining compliance with the final food-based and nutrient-based standards for school lunch. These services include:

• The option to purchase individual ‘Dinner Lady’ recipes from a database of hundreds of tried and tested pre-analysed recipes.
• ‘Off the shelf’ menus which are nutritionally analysed and supplied with all the associated standardised recipes, planned provision mix and additional supportive information. Recipes and menus are analysed as specified in the Trust’s step-by-step guide ;
• A tailored ‘Off the shelf’ menu to include a school’s favourite recipes to best fit with the school’s requirements. All recipes are standardised and analysed.
• Nutritional analysis and assessment of current menus submitted by schools which allows schools to send in their menus, recipes, product specifications and the planned provision mix to have their recipes and menu cycle nutritionally analysed against the nutrient-based standards. If the menu is not compliant, then HETs nutritionists and Dietitian are able to make suggestions for recipe and menu changes that will ensure compliance with the food-based and nutrient-based standards.
• Bespoke menus based on pupil/school preferences which are created for schools based on pupil preferences as determined by pupil surveys carried out by the school or by HET questionnaire. Recipes and menus are nutritionally analysed.
• Specific menu requests e.g. vegetarian menu (with the provision of oily fish once per menu cycle to meet the food based standards) which is compliant with the food-based and nutrient-based standards.
• Continued advice and support from HET and the ‘Dinner Lady’ to help schools achieve full compliance after recipes have been analysed which ensures that HETs nutritionists and Dietitian are available on the telephone and via e mail to answer questions and to offer advice on recipes, compliance with the standards, ideas and tips to help maintain and increase school meal take up. Support staff regularly telephone schools to see how they are getting on with the menus and if they have any queries.

This case study focuses on ways that the HET and ‘Dinner Lady Menu Service’ encourage flexibility using fresh seasonal ingredients to create school menus and recipes whilst maintaining compliance.

‘Dinner Lady’ recipes – cooking from scratch using freshly made produce

The ‘Dinner Lady’ recipes are centred on freshly made dishes, rather than processed, bought-in mixes and pre-manufactured frozen foods. Cooking from scratch creates an opportunity for both creativity and flexibility and due to the ingredients used recipes tend to be lower in saturated fat, salt and sugar and higher in micronutrient content, which helps achieve compliance with the nutrient-based standards. The fresh ingredients that are used to make sauces and flavour dishes are often richer in micronutrients than packet mixes, helping to achieve compliance with the Government’s nutrient-based standards.

The ‘Dinner Lady’ team offer guidance to schools on changes to existing menus that can improve compliance. For example, using homemade gravy instead of bought-in gravy granules can reduce the sodium content of a portion of gravy by over 80%. The recipe is shown below and a nutrient analysis compares this recipe to instant gravy made up with water. Switching to the homemade version has resulted in a significant reduction in the overall sodium content of many menus.

The ‘Dinner Lady’ Homemade Gravy

|_. Amount |_. Ingredients | |1 Kg (2lb 2oz) | Onions, peeled and sliced | |175g (6oz) | Margarine (hard, vegetable margarine) | | 175g (6oz) | Plain white flour | |5 litres (9 pints) | Water | |27g (1oz) | Yeast extract | | 12g (2 × 6g cubes) | Stock cube |

Serves 96

1. Melt the margarine and cook the onion until soft.
2. Stir in the flour and cook until the flour starts to brown.
3. Add the water, yeast extract and stock cubes (plus meat juices if desired).
4. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat to very low and cook gently for about 30 minutes.

|_\4. Nutrient Content |

Nutrient	Per 100g	Per serving 54g	Per 54g serving instant gravy
Energy (kcal)	39	21	23
Fat (g)	2.7	1.5	1.6
Saturated fat (g)	0.8	0.4	0.7
Carbohydrate (g)	3.3	1.8	2.0
NMES (g)	0.0	0.0	0.1
Fibre (g)	0.2	0.1	0.0
Protein (g)	0.7	0.4	0.2
Iron (mg)	0.15	0.08	0.0
Calcium (mg)	9	5	1
Vitamin A (µg)	0	0	0
Folate (µg)	16	9	0
Vitamin C (mg)	1	0	0
Sodium (mg)	83	45	318
Zinc (mg)	0.08	0.04	0.0

‘Off the shelf’ seasonal menus for Primary and Secondary Schools

‘Off the shelf’ seasonal ‘Dinner Lady’ primary menu cycles are available with or without a salad bar and jacket potatoes or with or without sandwich options. There is a minimum and maximum planned provision mix for salad, potatoes and sandwiches which can be applied whilst still meeting the standards. Schools can choose different menus depending on the season, for example, with salad in spring and with both salad and sandwiches in the summer. Secondary menu cycles are available with the most popular ‘snack’ offerings included, such as, pizza, jacket potatoes, pasta bar etc, and a maximum and minimum planned provision mix is also provided.

Schools that have purchased the ‘Off the self’ seasonal menus are able to tailor these to their customers by swapping up to three different recipes from the HET database. Menus are then re-analysed. This allows a school to have flexibility and swap any dishes that prove to be less popular with their students, at any particular point in time. Advice is offered on practical or nutritional issues that might occur with these changes. For example, where a school wanted to change a custard-based dessert for a biscuit due to the time constraints of making this pudding, the nutritionist suggested serving the biscuit with a milky drink. These together, would then have a similar nutrient profile to the custard-based dessert.

Once primary schools have compliant Autumn, Spring and Summer, seasonal three-week menu cycles, they can swap dishes around and mix and match recipes to ‘design’ their own menus from within their collection of recipes. HET have a large databank from which schools can select new recipes. These are all nutritionally analysed, which allows menu cycles to be re-analysed quickly after any changes. Guidelines are provided to preserve compliance, which reflects the interim food-based standards. The Trust has recently published an audit and inspections toolkit to help schools verify compliance with the final food-based standards, which can also be used. Additional guidance on menu planning is provided by HET to ensure a good balance of recipes is selected (i.e. to avoid too many recipes with higher levels of fat/sugar/salt or low in iron/zinc being chosen). A two-day practical training course is also available to increase cooks’ confidence in using the recipes, if needed. Some primary schools have switched to a mix of ‘off the shelf’ menus, mixed with their own existing menus.

Schools, purchasing the ‘off the shelf’ menus as a complete package, are encouraged to ease these into their own current menu – rather than making one big change from old to new menus. The pace of change is dependent upon the circumstances at each school. For example, starting with just one new recipe per day, will allow the cook time to get used to the additional preparation time required and allow the children to taste one new dish per day. This would be carried out for a trial period, gradually increasing the number of ‘Dinner Lady’ recipes until the new ‘Dinner Lady’ menus are fully installed. This is particularly useful for schools that are not used to cooking from scratch, since the catering staff can develop their practical skills on a day-to-day basis.

(Note; in terms of the standards, during this phased approach, the expectation is that schools would provide evidence that they are “working toward compliance” in a systematic way. This would involve demonstrating a phased approach to meeting both the final food-based and nutrient-based standards.)

If the ‘Dinner Lady’ planned provision mix differs from a school’s actual planned provision, a consultation offers options to resolve this.

Seasonality and seasonal swaps

HET has produced a seasonality swap booklet for the Food for Life Partnership (with funding from the Department of Health, this is available here:
www.foodforlife.org.uk/Resources/Teachingresources/Resourceview/tabid/79/ArticleId/16/Seasonal-Nutrient-Swap-for-Menu-Planners.aspx

The booklet offers a clear step-by-step guide to changing a primary school menu, as the season changes, without significantly altering the nutrient content. It shows how to swap seasonal fruit, vegetables, meat and fish in and out of the menu with a minimal impact on compliance with the nutrient-based standards for iron, folate, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin A, calcium, dietary fibre and protein. A case study, illustrating how the seasonal swap chart works, is available on the Trust’s website here:
www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk/menuflexibility/seasonalnutrientswapbooklet

The data for iron and folate has also been used to create a poster showing which vegetables are the best sources of these in each month of the year. More details can be found in the case study above or the link here:
www.foodforlife.org.uk/Resources/Teachingresources/Resourceview/tabid/79/ArticleId/103/Nutrient-swap-poster.aspx

Evaluation, monitoring and improving the ‘Dinner Lady’ Menu Service

The Dinner Lady Menu Service is continually monitored and evaluated so that improvements and enhancements can be made. The monitoring service includes:

• Regular telephone follow-up to schools to provide support and to deal with queries and concerns. Divergence from menus and compliance issues are also addressed.
• A survey of all registered schools which helps to provide feedback to the HET on the recipes and menus, helps to assess how closely schools are following the menus and identifies any further services schools would value e.g. more menus or recipes and practical skills.
• The recommendation from the HET that schools have an annual reassessment of compliance as menus may have evolved.
• A ‘blog’ facility which is available on the HET website to allow schools to leave comments or queries on menus.