Barnet Public Health are delighted to announce that we have been nominated for a Royal Society for Public Health & Wellbeing Award! Our project, SMILE (School Meals Initiative for Learning Healthy Eating), has been nominated in the Healthier Lives category.

SMILE is a Barnet Start and Grow Well (SGW) Public Health team-led project that was adapted and re-launched in 2021. Since its re-launch, the project has been delivered in 6 schools. Schools most in need due to health inequalities were prioritised during the school recruitment process. 

The SMILE project is a targeted school healthy eating initiative to help KS1 children learn about healthy eating and encourage children to make healthier food choices. Also, it provides nutrition educational opportunities to schools, parents & children. The project involves delivering whole-school healthy eating activities alongside the rollout of health-promoting SMILE trays. The trays have healthy eating messages and portioned sections for different food groups to encourage children to have a healthy balanced meal. There is evidence that making small tweaks to the school environment such as adapting how school meals are served, can have a positive nudging effect on children’s food choices. 

Overall, the SMILE project evaluation findings (collating data from the 6 participating schools) suggest the project was well received by pupils, school staff and parents/carers and the aim of increasing healthy eating behaviours in KS1 primary school-aged children was achieved. After the SMILE project intervention phase (4 weeks), the post-lunchtime observation identified more children chose a serving of vegetables. Children required less prompting/encouragement, and a decline was observed in children who refused fruit and vegetables (11% decline). Although the sweet dessert option remained popular, the number of children who chose fruit for their dessert increased from baseline (48% increase).