Part of the Vic Kids Eat Well movement, the bites provide schools with practical guidance, simple actions and tailored resources to help boost delicious and healthy breakfast options for students.
The focus is on including healthier drinks, fuelling with wholegrains and low sugar cereals, and colouring breakfast with fruit and vegetables.
Jennie Rush, pictured above, middle, is Mental Health and Wellbeing Leader at Mallacoota P-12 College in Victoria’s East Gippsland region, and hers is the first school to engage the breakfast club bites.
The school has an enrolment of 124 students, and with no canteen, nor a before school care program available, the breakfast club is an integral part of many students’ school day.
“We make sure that the students all have full tummies before they start school,” Rush tells EducationHQ.
“Some students come in that haven’t had any breakfast, sometimes they have a bit of breakfast at home, and then they’ll have something at breakfast club.”
The new ‘bites’ action has resulted in some simple, yet telling, changes.
Rush says fresh, locally grown fruit and veggies now feature in the breakfast club thanks to community donations – including strawberries, cucumbers and homegrown plums.
“Our breakfast club is always busy with at least 20 students and two staff,” Rush says.
“Secondary students pop in for toast or fruit, while others sit down and eat with friends, and we’ve now added more fruit and veggies thanks to Vic Kids Eat Well and family donations.”
“Our breakfast club is such a simple way to build relationships and celebrate local produce,” Mallacoota P-12 College’s Jennie Rush says. “Students feel proud to bring something in and share it.”
The impetus to include the ‘bites’ action came about after staff noticed students were not sustaining their healthy eating outside of major meal times.
“We started noticing some students didn’t have fruit during our morning fruit break,” Rush says.
“So we began taking items like apples, oranges and carrots from our breakfast club and placing them in bowls in classrooms.
“It means that now students can refuel with nutritious options when they need to – helping with focus and learning,” she says.
Rush says while Mallacoota’s partnership with Vic Kids Eat Well has been quite short, it has been significant.
She contacted the initiative a year ago, having formed a food and wellbeing team comprising herself, the school’s assistant principal, staff from the breakfast club and the school nurse.
With support from health promotion officers Andrea Kleehammer and Renate Hall, from Gippsland Lakes Complete Health and Vic Kids Eat Well, plans were put in place for easily manageable and sustainable changes.
“For a small regional school without a canteen, Mallacoota P-12 is building a strong, inclusive and nutritious food culture for students,” Kleehammer says.
She and Rush now meet every three weeks to a month, where help is provided to make small goals to improve the food environment around the school.
“They’re quite big on not necessarily taking things away or making the changes so drastic that it’s overwhelming – it’s more just about small improvements that are sustainable,” Rush says.
School staff now share chopped-up fruit and veggie platters during yard duty and in the classroom – further boosting nutrition and connection with students.
The variety on offer often means kids are now trying vegetables or fruit for the first time.
“I brought in some homegrown cucumbers recently and sliced them up,” Rush says.
“A student said to me ‘I’ve never tried cucumber before’, and after trying it, he said ‘it’s like crunchy water, isn’t it!’
“It was such a simple thing, but such a win. Now he’ll eat cucumber if it’s on offer,” she says.
Staff now share chopped-up fruit and veggie platters during yard duty and in the classroom – further boosting nutrition and connection with students.
Victoria’s $71 million School Breakfast Clubs initiative was first launched in 2016 to address the impact that disadvantage can have on education outcomes by offering free and healthy food in partnership with Foodbank Victoria.
Under the program, healthy breakfasts are available to all students, with lunches and home food supplies, including food products for holiday periods provided to students requiring additional support.
Vic Kids Eat Well concentrates on four key actions - giving sugary drinks the boot and letting water take the spotlight, ditching sugary sweets and offering delicious healthy snacks that give kids the fuel they need, tweaking menus to give fruit and veggies a chance to shine and putting the ‘fun’ into fundraising and marketing.
Supported by the Victorian Government and delivered by Cancer Council Victoria, in partnership with the National Nutrition Foundation, the initiative’s aim is to transform food and drink options in schools and other community organisations to give kids the healthy start they need to their active day.
Launched in January 2022, Vic Kids Eat Well now has more than 550 school members across Victoria and more than 1200 community organisations onboard.
All Victorian schools can participate in Vic Kids Eat Well and the breakfast club bites, including government, independent, Catholic, primary, secondary, combined and specialist schools.
To learn more about Vic Kids Eat Well “bite” (action) or to join for free, click here.
