Murchison’s healthy lunches going nationwide

Every weekday Murchison Area School students get their lunches delivered from Beechwoods Cafe - and they are so good and healthy that the Ministry of Education wants some of the recipes.

Beechwoods’ manager Jeanine Gill says the cafe has been delivering 180 lunches to the school for the past three years for the ministry’s healthy school lunches programme.

They create their own recipes, which have to get the tick of approval from a panel of nutritionists and contain the right amount of fibre, protein, vegetable content and even a particular weight for each age group.

“Now we’ve been asked by the ministry to use some of the recipes we’ve come up with so they can be shared nationwide,” Jeanine says.

Students are treated to about 20 different meals, including hot meals through winter, such as noodle stir fry, cottage pie, butter chicken and beef and bean burritos that are delivered in reusable containers which are then sterilised back at the cafe. That way there is not even cardboard that needs to be recycled.

Jeanine says the aim is to not just produce healthy lunches for the students, but also reduce the carbon footprint of those meals. Instead of getting in a vehicle to deliver lunches the few hundred metres along the road, the meals are loaded onto a trolley and wheeled along the footpath.

She says providing lunches to all the students means they are eating the same food together without being singled out and it also encourages them to eat healthily.

“We’ve got kids here who have never tried some of these meals before, but they see other kids eat them and try food they wouldn’t usually eat.

“I think it’s a great programme because it helps families - certainly in these economical times. People living in an isolated community like this have a $50 round trip to get groceries and this means families don’t have to pack lunches. The school is really good at putting (uneaten) meals aside for anyone who needs them.”

The cafe has also asked the school for lunch ideas that are then created along the ministry’s guidelines and Jeanine says it now plans to include students in the meal preparation.

“It all helps them understand what makes a healthy meal and why.”

The school’s deputy principal, Sarah Peacock, says the school lunch programme has been a “fantastic success” and much needed by many families.

“We did a parent survey after it first started and there was overwhelming support for it. Parents were grateful for financial reasons because it makes their weekly budgets a bit easier.

“It doesn’t discriminate for the families that really need it - it puts everyone on an even playing field.”

She says Murchison is a diverse community with many low-income families that are finding it really tough financially and the school lunches are one less cost, while providing really healthy food to all students.