More vegetables at holiday lunches in Cambridge

Holidays are not always a relaxing time for families that rely on free school meals to keep children of school age fed a healthy hot meal at lunch time. Cambridge City Council provides free lunches and activities for families with nursery or school-aged children in the school holidays, at various locations around Cambridge. The meals are available for families who normally receive free school meals, or who find the added expense of food in school holidays challenging to manage. This year, CSF has joined forces with the Council to ensure vegetables take centre stage by involving the families in fun meal preparation.

One of the barriers that has long been identified around eating vegetables is reluctance in spending time and money preparing vegetables without any guarantee that children will eat them at the end. Involving children and injecting fun into the process of preparing vegetables as part of meal times takes pressure off the process and that is exactly what CSF has done. Children and adults had lots of fun making ‘bugs’ out of vegetables and as a result cleaned their plates afterwards.

This is what one parent had to say during the session: I’ve never seen my child eat a tomato before, this is a big moment!

When asked which veg bug they would you like to make and eat (snail, caterpillar, etc.) this is what a child had to say: all of them!

A total of 66 children and adults took part in veg cookery sessions during February and May half-term at Trumpington Community Gardens, Ross Street Community Centre and Browns Field Youth and Community Centre.