Healthy Eating in the Early Years

Healthy eating has always been an important part of life at Poppies Daycare Nursery and with new early years guidance coming into place, healthy eating in the early years is now even more of a focus across nurseries nationwide.

From September 2025, all early years providers will be required to follow the Government’s new nutrition guidance. This update sits within the revised Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework, and aims to ensure that every child has access to meals, snacks, and drinks that are healthy, balanced, and nutritious.

While we’ve always promoted positive eating habits at Poppies Daycare Nursery, these changes help strengthen what we already do, encouraging children to make healthy choices, try new foods, and build a lifelong love of eating well.

 

What’s Changing in the Guidance

The new EYFS welfare and safeguarding requirements place a stronger emphasis on:

• Following national nutrition guidance: Replacing the previous menu advice, this new guidance will set clear expectations for what “balanced” looks like in early years settings.
• Developing positive eating habits: Encouraging healthy choices from an early age helps prevent childhood obesity and sets children up for long-term wellbeing.
• Supporting providers and parents: The guidance gives nurseries, childminders, and parents consistent advice to ensure children receive the right balance of nutrients both at nursery and at home.

In short, it’s about making sure every child gets the best start in life, one bite at a time.

 

How Poppies Promotes Healthy Habits

We already follow the Government’s early years nutrition guidance and have clear expectations for the types of foods we serve and encourage. For children who bring packed lunches, we’ve updated our Packed Lunch Guidance to reflect the new standards and we’ve been so pleased with how positively parents have responded.

Your support really makes a difference. By working together, we can make sure every child enjoys nutritious, tasty meals that give them the energy to play, learn, and grow.

Here’s what we recommend for a healthy, balanced lunchbox to encourage healthy eating in the early years:

✅ Vegetables or salad
✅ One portion of fruit
✅ A source of protein (such as lean meat, chicken, fish, eggs, cheese, or beans)
✅ A single source of calcium (such as yoghurt, natural yoghurt, or cheese)
✅ One portion of starchy food (such as bread, pasta, rice, noodles, or potatoes)

Please remember:

• We are a nut-free nursery, so all packed lunches must be free from nuts.
• There’s no need to include a drink, we provide fresh water for all children at lunchtime and milk at snack times.
• If your child needs a little extra food, please include another sandwich or savoury item rather than extra cakes or biscuits.
• Please ensure that smaller food items are not a choking hazard – cutting grapes, sausages etc length ways.
• We will not give children chocolate or sweet items from their lunch box.

 

Keeping Lunches Fresh and Fun

We know that coming up with healthy lunchbox ideas every week isn’t always easy, so here are a few tips we’ve gathered along the way:

• Try different breads (pitta, wraps, bagels, or soft grain bread) for variety.
• Mix things up with salads based on pasta, rice, or noodles, or a colourful mixed salad with a roll.
• Add salad or vegetables into sandwiches and wraps, a simple way to boost nutrition.
• Include a mix of fresh and dried fruit, vegetable sticks, or a small pot of yoghurt or rice pudding as a balanced alternative to sugary snacks.

In colder months, a warm lunch can be comforting, things like soup, beans, or casserole kept in a thermos flask are perfect for winter days.

We also encourage older children to take ownership of their mealtimes by unpacking their own lunchboxes, so please make sure all pots, tubs, and bags are clearly named and items are easy for them to access independently.

 

Foods to Avoid

The updated early years nutrition guidance also highlights a few foods and drinks that should be avoided where possible, such as:

• Dried fruit as a snack (only suitable as part of a meal)
• Tinned fruit in syrup – choose fruit in juice instead
• Foods with added salt or sugar (including tinned vegetables and flavoured packet meals)
• Sugary or sweetened yoghurts and fromage frais
• Foods high in saturated fat, salt, and sugar (cakes, biscuits, crisps, pastries, chocolate, etc.)
• Artificial sweeteners
• Skimmed or 1% milk for under-5s
• Sugary drinks, squash, and smoothies

These small swaps can make a big difference to children’s health and help them develop a natural preference for less processed, more nutritious foods.

Working Together to Build Good Habits for Healthy Eating in the Early Years

We’re so grateful for how positively our families have responded to the new healthy eating in the early years guidance and we’d love to keep the conversation going. Parents sharing lunchbox ideas, recipes, or quick prep tips could really help each other and keep things fun.

If you have a great idea for a healthy packed lunch or a favourite recipe your child loves, let us know! We’d love to share ideas across our Poppies community to inspire others.

Together, we can make healthy eating in the early years, enjoyable, creative, and sustainable, helping every Poppies child build the right habits for a happy, healthy future.