Children's party packs
If you are a parent you may be shocked
to learn that a standard plate of children’s party food could be
more calorific and laden with saturated fat than an entire
pepperoni pizza.
Thanks to our new party pack you can still lay on
tasty treats without the usual gut-busting nutritional content.
Animal themed
The animal themed packs aimed at
four to eight year-olds also come with glossy game cards to inspire
a string of fun games and craft activities to get
the party in full swing, as well as animal invitations and
placemats and a big book of stickers to decorate
them with.
Our senior heart health dietitian,
Victoria Taylor, said: “Parties are a time for
celebration and treating our children.
"But I’m sure few parents would give an entire
10-inch pepperoni pizza to a young child for a
meal. Yet giving them a standard plate of party food means they’d
actually consume more calories and saturated fat.
“It’s not about banning cakes and biscuits, or
serving up a plate of boring vegetables. But many young children
have busy social lives with parties being a regular occurrence.
"A few small changes can mean
the difference between them regularly having too much saturated
fat, salt and sugar and instead eating treats that are not only
fun and tasty but much better for them too."
Handy tips and suggestions
Few parents would give an entire 10-inch pepperoni pizza to a young child for a meal
The
pack includes a
handy guide with tips on how to
prepare food, entertainment and goody bags for children’s parties
as well as
colour-coded charts showing the
nutritional content of standard party food and healthier
options.
Suggestions include swapping traditional pizza
slices for ‘muffin monster’ pizzas made with bread
muffin bases. This can cut the amount of calories and salt by two
thirds (calories down from 248 to just 84 and salt lowered from
1.4g per portion to 0.5g).
While baking the suggested ‘cocoa cat
cake’ has a 80 per cent less saturated fat per portion
compared with a slice of standard chocolate birthday cake (0.8g
compared with 7.1g).
The pack adds to our healthy resources
for children as part of our aim to reverse the increase in
childhood obesity. Around one in five children
in England (22.8%) are overweight or
obese the year they start school.
In five year olds, 82 per cent of boys and 86.3 per
cent of girls in England don’t get their five a
day in terms of fruit and vegetables, while a third of
children get less than the recommended amount of physical activity each week (32%).
The pack costs
£6.99 plus postage and packaging.