What is the Food for Life Programme award?

This award scheme brings schools and their surrounding communities together based around the core ethos of healthy, tasty and nutritious food. The programme is about more than just food on the plate; it considers where food comes from and how it’s grown, cooked and experienced. We provide practical advice and support enabling schools to achieve bronze, silver and gold awards, rewarding and celebrating success.  Through a range of resources, advice and support we guide schools to make changes step-by-step through adopting a whole school approach.

Schools awarded by the programme are growing their own food; organising trips to farms; sourcing food from local producers; setting up school farmers’ markets; holding community food events; providing cooking and growing clubs for pupils and their families; serving freshly prepared, well-sourced meals and providing an attractive dining environment so lunchtimes are a positive feature of the school day.

Food is at the heart, but it is about much more than what’s on the plate. It’s about understanding how food is grown, learning about sustainability, making connections with health and the impact we make on the environment, caring about what we eat and how it was produced or reared – transforming our whole attitude to food.

The more we understand about where our food comes from, how we farm and process it, how we cook and eat it, the more we are educating future generations to respect our food culture, our health and our wider environment.