British Food Fortnight: Dorset pupil designs healthy new food to win national competition

A Dorset pupil has been awarded first prize in a national competition after designing a healthy new food for children.

Grace Upshall, 9, from Buckholme Towers School in Poole is the winner of the ‘Design a Healthy New Food’ competition, organised by Discovery Education and Switzerland’s Alimentarium Foundation. Open to primary schools across the UK, the competition asked pupils to design a nutritious food, meal or snack, and create a fun advert to promote it.

Grace was presented with her prize today at the start of British Food Fortnight. The year 5 pupil impressed judges with her design for Brilliant Breakfast, a blissful bar packed with granola, fruit and honey and drizzled with yoghurt and coconut. Featuring colourful packaging to appeal to young eaters, Grace also cooked up an eye-catching advert with the slogan: “Eat, Sleep, Be Healthy, Repeat.” The judges were impressed with Grace’s creativity and nutritional research.

As part of her prize, Grace and her school received a special visit from TV’s Lunchbox Doctor Jenny Tschiesche today, 24th September. Jenny led an interactive ‘Healthy Eating’ assembly with lots of fun activities including a session on food advertising and understanding nutrients. Discovery Education’s Partnership Director, Spyros Charalambous presented Grace with a goody bag and a framed copy of her Brilliant Breakfast advert.

Grace’s advert has also just gone on display at the Alimentarium Museum in Switzerland – the world’s first food museum and an international public learning centre for nutrition. Ruth Darvill, Head of Buckholme Towers School was delighted that one of her pupils had been selected as the winner:

“Our school encourages all the children to ‘find their niche’ and Grace has certainly found hers with her winning design. Encouraging healthy lifestyles is so important and hence forms part of our PSHE curriculum throughout the school as we want all our children to grow into healthy, confident, curious, considerate individuals.”

Grace’s teacher, Clare Gawler said:

“Our pupils really enjoyed taking part in the competition, and learned a great deal about nutrition. The prize giving assembly today was a real treat for all of the children and made them think about healthy eating in a fun and exciting way.”

Lunchbox Doctor Jenny Tschiesche said:

“I loved having the opportunity to work with the children at Buckholme Towers. Having an understanding of food and nutrition, how to make healthier choices and what constitutes a healthy meal is possibly one of the most important skills children of today need as they move into adulthood.”

Christine Major, Director of Educational Partnerships at Discovery Education said:

“It’s never been more important to educate children about nutrition, and to help them make healthy choices. We were really impressed with the calibre of competition entries and especially the creativity of Grace’s winning entry. We hope that our partnership with the Alimentarium Food Museum will ignite children’s interest in the science of eating and bring nutrition to life in a fun and accessible way.”

The competition was launched as part of a 3-year partnership between Discovery Education and Switzerland’s Alimentarium Foundation, delivering nutrition resources to primary schools across the country via Discovery Education Espresso’s award-winning digital learning service. Exciting new content launching this month will help children to learn about food sustainability and the environment. From farm to fork, pupils will explore how the food they consume is reared, grown or caught – both today and throughout history.

With an emphasis on food sustainability, they’ll explore seasonality and learn how food is transported and preserved, while considering the economic and ecological impact of food choices. They’ll also have fun investigating the science and history behind some common methods for cooking and preserving food.

The new digital resources include interactive videos, activities and games, helping primary school teachers to meet National Curriculum requirements. In addition to last year’s module on ‘Eating, moving, and growing’ it’s hoped these resources can be used to help children grow in confidence to make choices that benefit their own health as well as that of the planet.