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Home > 'Go for your life' Canteen Advisory Service > Assessing your canteen menu
Assessing your canteen menu
The ‘Go for your life’ School Canteens and other Food Services Policy and Food Planner are useful tools to help you check if your current menu is healthy. They divide foods that are supplied in schools into everyday (green), select carefully (amber) and occasionally (red) categories according to their nutritional value. It is useful to have a copy of this Food Planner on hand when assessing and planning your canteen menu. Download the ‘Go for your life’ Food Planner.
See further information on these resources.
Here are some tips to consider when assessing and planning your canteen menu:
- Does the menu offer a variety of foods from all the different food groups – breads and cereals, vegetables, fruit, dairy, meat and meat alternatives?
- Use the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development's Guidelines for School Canteens and Other School Food Services to classify which category the foods on the menu fall into. Check the balance of foods on the menu - do most of the foods fall into the Recommended Foods category?
- Consider ingredients used in home-made recipes and food preparation and cooking techniques (for example use of high fat spreads on sandwiches).
- You may need to have exact recipes and food product labels on hand to refer to when assessing the menu.
- Take into account serve sizes.
- Use upper grade students to help with assessing the menu against the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development's Guidelines for School Canteens and Other School Food Services or the Dietary Guidelines for Children and Adolescents in Australia as part of their curriculum activities.
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