Eight year-old Ellie wins healthy food competition

A Year 4 pupil at Peter Gladwin primary school in Portslade has won a competition to design healthy snacks.

Ellie Pickard's snacks were breadsticks and vegetable sticks in various savoury dips, along with fruit sticks and plain yoghurt.

Peter Gladwin has been working with Brighton & Hove City Council's public health schools team to encourage pupils to swap their sugary after-school snacks for low-sugar alternatives to improve both their dental health and overall nutrition.

The competition to design a healthy snack saw pupils form a focus group and do a survey of all the snacks being eaten in the playground.

They then delivered a school assembly with a film of pupils making healthy snacks to launch the competition.

To underline the dental health benefits of the healthy snacks initiative Ellie's prize was an electric toothbrush. The public health schools team made 100 of her snacks to give out to parents at the school's recent sports day.

The chair of the council's health and wellbeing board, Councillor Daniel Yates, said: "Our public health schools team do a great job working with schools to make learning about healthy eating fun for children.

"They understand that it's not just about telling children what foods to eat, it's about getting them involved in discovering new healthy foods and new combinations of food for themselves."

Posted: 7th of July 2015