Gillian Kynoch has been appointed as national food and health co-ordinator to ensure that healthy food is more widely available in all parts of Scotland. Her post is part of a two-pronged attack by the Scottish Executive on the nation’s unhealthy diet. The second prong is a doubling of the Executive’s investment in the Scottish Community Diet Project to pound;1.2 million over the next three years to expand its work in low-income communities.

“We want to make healthy eating easier,” says Ms Kynoch, who took up her post a month ago. “Schools are crucial here. Our aim is to reach a stage where you can access healthy food at school, at work and in the local shop. We have to make this possible.”

Eating habits are improving in Scotland and our health is getting better, with the latest figures showing a 6 per cent increase in fruit consumption and 14 per cent fall in early deaths due to heart disease. However, in spite of health initiatives such as breakfast clubs in schools and the general promotion of health education and healthy lifestyles, school dinners remain a stumbling block, Ms Kynoch says.

“The provision of healthy food in schools is at the top of my list of priorities.

“The increase in the number of breakfast clubs and of fresh fruit initiatives, where schools have fruit-tasting sessions and promote fresh fruit cheaply, is great. There’s a lot of excellent health education going on but the school dinner remains the weakest link.

“You can’t effectively promote healthy living to pupils while failing to provide healthy food at school dinners. For too long school dinners have not been high enough up the agenda.”

Healthy school dinners, she says, should be part of the school ethos and should reflect everything the school is trying to do.

This is of particular importance to Scotland’s children, where the uptake of school dinners is around 50 per cent. The level is much higher than in England, she says.

Before taking up her new post, Ms Kynoch was a community dietician based at the health promotion department of Forth Valley Primary Care NHS Trust. There, in the early 1990s, she pioneered school nutrition action groups (SNAGs) to tackle poor eating habits in children.

The key message, she says, is to encourage schools to be active in health promotion and healthy eating and to encourage young people to be active in seeking healthy options. The way to get this across, she argues, is by sharing best practice.

“We need zero tolerance on anything but best practice. It can be done. Healthy food is economic and popular if presented well.

“You have to convince local authority catering and education departments that it is not an economic nightmare. It will deliver best value and it will determine what the customer wants.

“This involves change in eating habits across the whole age range but it starts in nurseries and primary schools.”

The successful strategy involves the whole school community. Schools should not passively accept catering arrangements but should see the dining area as integral to school aims and ethos and be pro-active in promoting healthy food.

“You have to get catering staff, teachers, pupils and parents working together. Everybody has to be on board before you can embark on a successful venture,” Ms Kynoch says.

She emphasises: “You have to meet the child where heshe is. You have to address the client group.

“Taking the example of breakfast clubs, they are there to achieve a lot of different services, from child care and social well-being to promoting healthy food and even to combat hunger.

“The bottom line is, if it’s hunger, then you’re happy just to see them eating. Eating food in the morning is an improvement on hunger and all improvements are welcomed.

“It’s about staged improvements, small permanent changes. You can’t suddenly provide food that is alien to them. Children won’t accept that,” she says.

The quality of school dinners in Scotland at the moment and the nutritional standards which will be set nationally have yet to be determined. “We don’t actually know the extent of good and bad practice across Scotland,” says Ms Kynoch. “We’re going to commission an audit this year so that we can then set nutritional standards.”

This process of consultation, implementation and monitoring of progress will be based on “pragmatic guidelines”.

Pragmatism is a key factor in Ms Kynoch’s approach. Asked about the Fuel Zones in Glasgow schools, which supply fizzy drinks such as Coca-Cola, she is more than willing to embrace their marketing techniques.

“Fuel Zones have moved on a lot,” she says.

“In Glasgow primaries they do emphasise healthy eating. The Fuel Zone tag is a marketing ploy.

“There is no point in serving healthy food if nobody comes. My argument is you have to make the healthy choice the best presented, the most attractive and the best value for money.”

To make healthy eating the cultural norm, primary schools have a key role in making children aware of their meal choices, of the varieties of food available and of their diet and nutritional value.

Secondary schools cannot influence children in the same way.

“By secondary school young people are already free high street consumers. You can’t shut the real world out,” she says, “but you must provide them with a real healthy choice.

“Adolescents should be encouraged to make choices. If you’ve done the job in primary, they should continue healthy eating. Adolescent rebellion might also involve the deliberate choice of other options, but if you’ve done the job earlier they should come back to healthy eating with maturity.

“In short, everything has to evolve and you have to work pragmatically. Don’t come in too extreme. If something is too new, too different, it won’t work.

“On the food counter, healthy options should not be segregated. They should be spread among all the options, from hot foods to cold trays and snacks.

“The healthy option shouldn’t be seen as something special. It’s the norm.”

One local authority which has distinguished itself in the area of school dinners is Midlothian, which last month received its second Healthy Choices Award from the Health Education Board for Scotland and the Scottish Consumer Council for its provision of healthy food choices in all its primary schools.

The first award was made in September 1999. Since then a mini version of the “Bite Site” service provided in Midlothian’s high schools has been piloted. This offers children a choice of well balanced, nutritious meals, including an international selection, giving them the chance to try different cultural dishes, such as Indian, Mexican and Italian.

The pilot has been so successful that it is being introduced in all primaries across Midlothian. Some schools report increases of more than 50 per cent of children taking schools dinners. Primary school meals from April to September this year are 23,532 up on the same period last year.

Gorebridge Primary has been one of the pilot schools promoting healthy eating. Headteacher Maureen Jobson says the gradual improvement in dinners over the past two years has had a notable effect on behaviour and achievement. She puts the success down to a holistic approach.

“There’s been a big improvement in behaviour and attitude and our academic achievement has gone up. It’s down to a lot of things but the healthy eating can’t be irrelevant.

“You have to promote the health of the whole child: the dietary and nutritional health, the social and emotional, the physical and the psychological. You need to have healthy children for them to succeed.”

Mrs Jobson argues that healthy eating is as integral to the school ethos as circle time, pupil councils and its anti-bullying policy.

“The self-esteem of the children has risen and they are confident about choices in general, including what they eat. They know they can make a difference to their own lives.”

Gorebridge Primary has two health focus weeks per session, in May and October. These include immensely popular fruit tasting sessions, when pupils may experience their first fresh mango, star fruit or pineapple. These sessions have influenced the catering, with pupils now asking for the more exotic fruits to be on offer.

Winning over the pupils gradually also involved no longer stocking crisps in the tuck shop, and cutting chips and burgers for lunch to once a week. Initially the children would say “Good, it’s chips day” or “Great, it’s burger day”, but those reactions have now passed and, as school cook supervisor Pat Wynn attests, they are more likely to run out of baked potatoes or fresh baguettes as demand grows for the healthier options.

With an emphasis on fresh ingredients, the home-made soup, pizzas and healthy biscuits are also popular, along with yoghurt and fruit. The healthy options are marketed with a crossed fork and thistle logo.

Zoe Wood, a P6 pupil, says: “I like curry and spaghetti bolognese, all made with fresh ingredients. I usually have the home-made soup to start. For sweet I sometimes have the (fat-free) cake or a yoghurt.”

Since the introduction of healthy options, dinner attendance has risen by around 70 pupils per day, says Mrs Wynn, out of a school roll of 365.

Surveys suggest that the pupils now eat healthily across the range available, from hot food to light bites and cold plates. And the fruit co-op, which comes twice a week to the school, cannot keep up with the demand for fresh fruit.

“Before, there were choices but not as good,” says Mike Leitch, a P7 pupil. “The food’s brilliant. The children really like it.

“Typically I’d have one day hot and one day cold. I eat a lot more fruit in school now. I had fresh pineapple at a fruit-tasting and would like to see it at dinners. There is watermelon, though.”

Elaine Lappin, a P6 pupil, says: “Fruit is my favourite. We had a fruit-tasting before the October holiday. I tasted my first mango. I’d like to see that on the menu.

“It only costs 10p for a piece of fruit from the fruit co-op. It’s usually apples, pears, plums, oranges, bananas.”

As part of its strategy, Gorebridge Primary set up its own healthy eating working group, comprising two parents, two pupils, two teachers and catering staff, and they met with the authority’s head of catering services to come to a “happy arrangement”. Parents were invited in for a free meal and for one month pupils ticked off what they had for dinners, so that progress of the arrangements could be monitored.

“You have to involve parents every step of the way,” says Mrs Jobson. “You have to carry the whole family with you and give healthy eating a high focus in the school community.

“Parents are very pleased.”

Gorebridge Primary has water coolers around the school and each child has his or her own beaker and can drink water as and when they wish. As with healthy eating, drinking water has become second nature for these children.

“Peer pressure helps. Healthy eating and drinking has become something of a trend. I don’t know how aware the pupils are of the change. I think because it was gradual it just seems natural,” says Mrs Jobson.

MINI BITE SITES (extracts from the menu)

Hearty bars

Choice of one from:filled sandwiches, baguettes, morning rolls, sesame rolls, wholemeal rolls or finger rolls. Served with a salad garnish, from a selection of: lettuce, tomato, cucumber, onion, grapes, kiwi slice, orange slice, cress, grated carrot, coleslaw.

Ploughman lunches

Lettuce, tomato, cucumber, cress, 1oz cheese, pickle, crusty bread and a portion of margarine.

Daily sweet

Choice from:mousse, whip, yoghurts, fromage frais, jelly, ice-cream, cheesecake, trifle, fruit platter (a selection from slices of orange, apple, banana, kiwi, grapes, melon, satsuma, peaches, plums and so on) or whole fresh fruit portion or raisins.

Hot food

including Round the World international dishes: chicken tikka, curry, chilli con carne, lasagne, spaghetti bolognese or other pasta dish, fish, roast meats and so on.

Served with a vegetable or salad portion and potato portion (oven baked) or crusty bread or garlic bread. Chips available once a week.

Baked Potato with choice of filling (hot or cold).