Did you know?
Children start learning about food at a very early age. The messages they receive during this time lay the foundations for the choices they make about food as they move up to school and beyond. With more than one in five children overweight or obese as they start their school reception year, it’s never been more important to help them get a healthy start in life.
We’re leading the work to help early years providers meet children’s nutritional needs more consistently, and to help families with young children to develop the cooking skills and confidence they need to cook and eat more healthily.
The work is commissioned by the Department for Education with support from its Voluntary and Community Sector Grant
Guidelines and resources
We’ve produced voluntary food and drink guidance for early years settings which includes information about encouraging fussy eaters, portion sizes, cultural and special dietary needs. You can also download two seasonal recipe books, or order printed copies of all three publications.
Download the Eat Better, Start Better resources or order printed copies
Training
We’re working with selected local authorities to train health and early years professionals – helping them to understand the voluntary nutritional standards for early years settings and to cascade good practice in their communities. We’re also training them to safely run healthy cooking activities with families.
If your local authority has not been chosen to receive the training as part of our work with the Department of Education, you can purchase our training packages.
Read more about Eat Better, Start Better training
Hear from those who've tried it!
These childcare providers are just some of those who've been using our resources to follow the Early Years Voluntary Food and Drink Guidelines:
Background
Look at background information about our work in early years food
FAQs
Early Years frequently asked questions
