Eating healthy food
Eating a healthy, balanced diet is essential for maintaining good health. Food provides us with energy and essential nutrients and you need the right amount of each to be healthy.
A diet with the following food will provide you with enough nutrients and energy to stay healthy:
- carbohydrates such as potatoes, rice and pasta
- plenty of fruit and vegetables
- some protein-rich foods such as meat, fish and lentils
- some milk and dairy foods
- not too much fat, salt or sugar.
The energy you get from food is measured in calories:
- if you eat too many calories you put on weight
- if you eat too few calories you lose weight.
You need to eat the right amount of calories for the amount of activity you do. For more information on healthy eating, visit the NHS Choices website.
We want all Nottinghamshire residents to have access to affordable, healthy food and have the opportunity to learn, share knowledge and skills to improve health. Eating healthy food is good for us all - it means more than food, it's social connection, good for your wellbeing and your physical health. You could:
- join a social eating event in your local community
- cook your own meals from scratch
- eat together with family and friends.
Nottinghamshire Social Eating
Social eating is a fantastic way to eat nutritious, healthy food in a social environment. Eating together is good for us – it helps us to connect with each other, enjoy sharing and build communities. It also offers and opportunity to contribute back to our communities by volunteering. Meals are made and served by volunteers for a small costs or free and is often food that is being redistributed and saved from going to landfill. Social eating helps the environment and prevents food waste. Find out more and look for a social eating venue near you.
Children’s Kitchen
The Children’s Kitchen project was developed by Feeding Bristol, working with Early Years nurseries and Children’s Centres across the City. In 2021, as part of the Nottinghamshire Childhood Obesity Trailblazer Programme, the Children’s Kitchen project has been delivered in two local nurseries. The project aims to build confidence and excitement around fresh produce and growing vegetables through working in Early Years settings to deliver weekly hands-on food or growing sessions for the children, which staff also take part in to build their own skills and food confidence. The aim is for settings to become able to make food part of their daily life rather than a special ‘one off’ event, making healthy food a key part of learning. The food sessions are child-led and encourage children to build familiarity and knowledge of food through exploring in their own way and time, rather than more adult or recipe-led cookery sessions.
School meals
Nottinghamshire County Council school meals are packed with fresh and tasty ingredients which meet many strictly regulated food assurance schemes. In Nottinghamshire, we are actively trying to reduce our carbon footprint and are proud to be going local with our school dinners, to cut down on our food miles. Take a look at our school meal menus.
