Healthy eating

Keep your family fed using this advice, support and recipe ideas for eating healthy and having a balanced diet.

Better Health Healthier Families (NHS)

Better Health Healthy Families can help your family be healthier and happier.

Find out more about what's really in the food your family eats, great recipe ideas, and lots of fun activities to get you and the kids moving and having fun.

To learn more, go to the Better Health Healthy Families website

Here are three recipes you can download to get you started:

If you have a Healthy Start card, you can use it to buy the ingredients for the recipes! Find out more on our Healthy Start page.

Healthy Steps email programme

Healthy Steps, from Better Health Healthier Families, is a free 8-week email programme giving families low-cost, easy and practical ways for the whole family to eat better and move more.

Sign up by completing a quiz on your current eating and physical habits. Each week you'll be sent simple steps you can take based on your answers, such as

reducing sugar
eating 5 a day
meal planning on a budget
swapping out sugary fizzy drinks for a week
adding fruit or veg to breakfasts.

Regular feedback points and an end-of-programme survey give families the opportunity to celebrate their successes.

Better Health Food Scanner App (NHS)

The free NHS Food Scanner app can help you to make healthier swaps for you and your children next time you shop.

Learn about the NHS Food Scanner app at Healthier Families (NHS)

Healthy eating guides

These resources can help you to know how to have a healthy and balanced diet, what size portions are suitable for children, and what to do if your child is a fussy eater.

The Eatwell Guide (NHS): shows you how much of what we eat overall should come from each food group to achieve a healthy, balanced diet.
Eating Healthily (Health for Kids!): visit the website with your kids for great ideas about healthy eating.
Eating well in the early years (First Steps Nutrition Trust): downloadable guides to healthy eating for children aged 1 to 4 years, including advice about snacks, good food choices and portion sizes, packed lunches and eating well for vegan infants.
10 steps for healthy toddlers (Infant and Toddler Forum): practical, easy-to-follow guide on what food to offer, what behaviour to encourage, and how best to manage mealtimes. With downloadable 10-step guide for parents leaflet and introduction booklet.
Common feeding pitfalls (Child Feeding Guide): Find out about the most common feeding pitfalls and learn what they are, why they occur, and what to do to avoid them, written by experts at Loughborough University.

British Nutrition Foundation

The British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) tell us:

Children from 5 to 12 years grow very rapidly and can be very active. A diet providing adequate energy and nutrients is essential for children at this stage.
School children should eat a healthy, varied diet based on the Eatwell Guide and this should be combined with regular physical activity in order to maintain a healthy body weight.
It is recommended that children and young people should engage in at least 60 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity each day.
It is important to teach children about dental hygiene to keep their teeth healthy and strong.
New food-based and nutrient-based standards have been set to make school lunches healthier. Parents can also refer to guidelines to prepare healthier packed lunches for their children.

Go to the British Nutrition Foundation website to learn more

Healthy portion size recommendations

Children need foods from the four main food groups, in the right balance and in the right portion size. Knowing how much of each to give your child is not always easy.

The BNF's 5-5-3-2 guide explains the amount of portions of each food group that children should be getting each day.

The BNF have also produced some downloadable guides that might help.

For a quick guide to portion sizes, download The 5532-a-day poster [PDF]
For more detailed information and a greater range of food examples, download The 5532-a-day: Perfect portions for little tums booklet [PDF]

Read about nutrition for toddlers and pre-schoolers to learn more about healthy portion sizes

Healthy recipes

I Can Cook: Cooking and baking with children

Encourage children to eat a wider variety of foods with recipes by watching an episode of I Can Cook (BBC).

One place to start encouraging your child to cook and take a more active role in the foods they eat is at Cooking and baking with children (CBeebies).

Full Time Meals with Marcus Rashford and Tom Kerridge

Full Time Meals with Marcus Rashford and Tom Kerridge is aimed at families to help tackle child food poverty so that "No child should ever go to bed hungry". Low-cost and easy-to-make recipes and instructional videos can be found on the

Healthy and affordable meals from Nottinghamshire School Meals service

Ideas for healthy and affordable meals like this Firework Rocket Fruit Kebab can be found on the School Meals Page (Nottinghamshire County Council) (opens in new tab)

Find out how to make a healthy Firework Rocket Fruit Kebab snack in this 2-minute YouTube video. (There's also a firework milk experiment at 1 min 24 seconds).

Your Health Your Way Notts healthy recipes

Find out how to create a healthy meal of steak and sweet potato fries in this 2-minute YouTube video

More videos can be found in the Your Health Your Way cooking YouTube play list

Food support

There are services across Nottinghamshire to help you stretch your food budget while also maintaining a healthy diet.

You'll find details of food banks, food clubs, community supermarkets, healthy recipes, free school meals and milk and more.

Visit our Food and Food support page to find out more