Fun. Healthy. Globally inspired. Locally sourced
Hello Bathwick!
I’m Leah, Chair of FLAG – Bathwick St. Mary’s very own ‘Food for Living Action Group’. Previously known as SNAG (School Nutrition Action Group), it was originally set up by 2 nutritionists with a passion for giving our children an understanding of how important the food choices we make really are. It has been running for many years with a focus on ‘helping children to make healthier nutritional choices’.
I joined in 2018, just after the wonderful Kirstie Morgan-Fogden took over as head chef in our school kitchen. Since then we’ve seen the quality of our school lunches improve tremendously and our children all now enjoy a hot lunch, organic and locally sourced wherever possible and most importantly, all freshly made in our school kitchen.
Since being voted Chair in 2021, we’ve revised our mission statement to reflect how far we’ve come in changing the conversation around food and we will continue to run fun, healthy, fund raising and educational events and activities in and after school. The money we raise supports topical charities, the PTA and a small fund for FLAG to use to fund events and resources. The sort of events we’ve run recently are cake sales, smoothie sales, celebratory cultural lunches and educational presentations for Collective Worship… and we’re just getting started…!
Mission statement
We promote a fun, healthy and balanced in-school food culture, supporting both staff and parents, to encourage healthy appetites, positive connotations, celebration of diversity and eating well to feel well. We seek opportunities to use food as a vehicle for learning and enjoy exploring the world on our plates. Using positive language, healthy ingredients and fun experiences, we encourage our children to have positive attitudes towards food both nutritionally and mentally. We seek a deeper understanding of the impact of our food choices on the environment, the local community and on ourselves.
We want to maximise the joy in this essential aspect of our everyday; food not just for life but for living.
Our current FLAG members are:
- Chair: Leah Allen: Mum of 4 and qualified Food Technology teacher, Leah passionately pursues a fun, healthy, educational and open-minded approach to feeing kids.
- Paul McGuinness: Paul is the link governor for FLAG. He is passionate about the importance of children knowing where their food comes from and developing a love of making (and eating!) good food.
- Victoria Thomas: as a mother and osteopath specialising in children, I have seen first-hand the difference nutritionally dense food can make to a child’s physical and mental / emotional development – ‘let food by thy medicine and medicine be thy food’!
- Tanith Capitani: My name is Tanith Capitani and I am a gardener. I’ve always had an interest in nutrition and feel it is important to involve children as much as possible with food and healthy eating.
- Megan Cox: Megan is a dietician and parent to an infant child.
