Guiding principles of the High 5 Health & Wellbeing Programme

1. Don’t refer to good and bad foods. Instead, distinguish between foods that most of us need to eat more of and foods that most of us should eat less of.
2. Respect the different food needs of pupils. These differences may be for social, cultural or medical reasons.
3. Remember to acknowledge the role the environment plays in making healthier lifestyle choices easier or difficult (eg: shops, busy roads, weather, school meals, advertising etc).
4. You can make healthy food and physical activity choices, no matter what your weight.
5. Being in the right weight range for your height is no guarantee that you are physically fit or have a healthy diet.
6. Ensure that the net effect of the whole programme is to show food as a positive thing for your health and wellbeing, rather than primarily a threat to it.
7. Avoid food snobbery. Pizzas and burgers may be part of children’s food culture. Work with it not against it, and teach children how to choose/make the healthiest versions of the food they like.
8. Don’t refer to high fat, high sugar foods as treats or for special occasions. It is not helpful for pupils to place extra value on these foods. Instead, think of certain fruits in this way. Why shouldn’t strawberries or pineapple be a treat?!
9. Be sensitive to different family budgets. Many families find fruit expensive, and high fat processed meats are often cheaper sandwich fillings than lean meat or fish.
10. Use at least 1 lesson to create a constructive dialogue between pupils and the school canteen. This can lead to changes that increase the likelihood of pupils taking a school meal and making healthier choices when they do so.
11. Get the balance right between knowledge, skills and attitudes. Sport, cooking, food growing and interpreting nutrition labels are skills. Knowing what counts towards your “5-a-day” is knowledge; a critical look at advertising and marketing primarily changes attitudes.
12. Remember to look at different food cultures. Sometimes you will be able to create awareness of a new food that happens to be “good” for your health, without bringing nutrition into the lesson at all.
13. Remember to involve parents as much as you can in the programme. You can do this through homework activities at least. However, for early year groups (P1 to P3), we strongly recommend that parents are as fully involved as possible.

This list is also available in Microsoft Word Format.