On September 1, an amendment to the Food and Nutrition Safety Act came into force. According to it, school children will only have access to healthy products in the school shop and canteen.

Why changes in school canteens?

According to the latest research by the Institute of Food and Nutrition, every fifth student is overweight, and Polish children are gaining weight the fastest in Europe. What's more, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that obesity is a civilization disease more dangerous than AIDS. According to its estimates, as many as 29 percent of Polish 11-year-olds are overweight. The act is a decisive step towards improving this state of affairs, but introduced quickly and without support for canteen agents, it causes a lot of confusion and even leads to the withdrawal of further cooperation with schools.

School canteens are facing major changes. The media report sensationally that salt and sugar cannot be used, that potatoes, pork chops and stewed cabbage salad will disappear. The truth is less dramatic and, above all, eliminates only those harmful raw materials from the diet. The MEN regulation precisely specifies the permitted amount of salt and sugar when preparing meals for children in schools. Colored fruit yogurts must be replaced with natural ones, fish must be served once a week and fried dishes no more than once a week, and in addition, frying can only be done in rapeseed oil. A specific amount of fruit and vegetables must be served with each meal. Dishes must be prepared without flavor enhancers, food concentrates or preservatives. Beverages and pastries cannot be sweetened with sugar, and there will be no white bread either.

Parents wonder what their children will be fed with then. Until now, it was rare for a dietician to prepare a menu. No one checked the calorific value and nutrient content of meals served to students. Now we have to start with that.

The new regulation of the Minister of Health includes requirements that canteens must meet. It contains information on the appropriate selection of foods, the number of meals, and a list of product groups that should be included in the canteen menu. Lunch alone should cover 30 percent of a child's daily energy requirement, and the daily menu must consist of at least 4 meals.

Penalties for breaking regulations

Previously, the Sanitary Inspectorate only controlled food safety and hygiene. It had no obligation or possibility to take samples. Currently, in order to check whether the regulations are being applied, the Sanitary Inspectorate can take samples for analysis and check the documentation regarding preparation, i.e. the recipe.

The regulations were introduced and enforcement began overnight. However, there was no time to help agents and educate cooks, who should learn to calculate nutritional and energy values. However, resourcefulness comes to the rescue, because if canteens do not quickly adapt to the new law, they will go bankrupt. Students discouraged by the taste of the lunches are already giving up, and breaking the regulations can result in a fine of up to PLN 5,000. It is cheaper to buy a Nutrition Calculator Program for PLN 1,700 and have one problem solved.

Nutrition Calculator Program

The Nutrition Calculator FOODCAL program is ideal for running a school canteen. Although it has so far been used mainly by food producers, who, under new EU regulations, also have new obligations regarding the calculation of nutritional and energy values, the basis for calculating values ​​for canteen dishes and for packaged food products is the same. In the program, all you need to do is download the raw materials included in the recipe from the database and calculate them with one click. It is worth printing the finished result as a PDF file and keeping it for checking. The printout will contain a saved recipe showing what raw materials were used to prepare the dish and a list of all nutritional and energy values. Good knowledge of the raw materials that can be analyzed on an ongoing basis in the Calculator database allows you to look for less caloric substitutes and prepare dishes that are increasingly tasty, adapting them to new realities.

We encourage those interested to register in the Nutrition Calculator FOODCAL program on the website
https://pl.nutrition-calculator.com/
and run the basic version START FOR FREE. This version contains enough calculations to test the program in terms of its suitability for your own needs and then decide to continue using the program. Calculator users also have constant support from a food technologist in using the program and advice on creating recipes.

If you survive this year, the second one will be easier! We wish everyone perseverance and success.

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