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Food Foundations
In This Issue
Food Foundations Subscription 2025-2026
No Money, No Time
Mealtime Chatter
Converting Recipes to Child Sized Serves
How Does Chocolate Grow?
All About Allergens Training
Menu Planning in ECEC - FREE Workshop
Live Webinar: Positive Food Exposure Through Play Based Learning
2025 Food Safety Supervisor Courses
Recipes
Training Opportunities
Access Links
Food Foundations Subscription 2025-2026
Welcome to the new Food Foundations subscription year! We look forward to supporting you to build positive and nourishing food environments for the children in your care.
Keep an eye out for your subscription invoice, which will be sent out in the next week. Please get in touch with us on 07 3257 4393 or email foodfoundations@naqld.org if you have any questions about your subscription.
Download your Food Foundations Certificate
Download and print out your Food Foundations certificate to display in your Centre. Click on the button below to download your certificate - you will need to sign in to your account to do this. If you have issues logging in, please send us an email at foodfoundations@naqld.org.
No Money, No Time
The cost of food is on the rise, with many families finding it challenging to manage food budgets and find the time to prepare nutritious meals for their families. Whether you are a small or large centre, here are some ideas for how you may be able to offer support to families at your centre.
- Put out a fruit bowl in your foyer for families to take a fruit snack at drop off or pick up
- Do you have left over baked items from that day, or are you able to make a little extra? Package up left over muffins or slice for families to take home with them.
- If you provide food and your resources and facilities allow it, you could make extra of cooked lunch meals, and package these up to sell for a price that will cover the cost of ingredients.
- Connect families to the 'No Money, No Time' website, which has lots of quick, easy and cheap recipes ideas.
- Direct families to the Food Bank 'Find Food Support' webpage, where they can enter their suburb to find places where food relief is available.
Mealtime Chatter
Conversations we have around food at mealtimes matter! How we communicate about food will shape children's emotional relationship with food.
Children in the early years learn about food through sensory experiences - tasting, smelling, touching, and seeing. Abstract concepts like food groups or nutrients aren't as easy to understand at this age.
Here are some mealtime chatter prompts that educators can use at mealtimes:
- What colour is it?
- Is it small or big?
- What kind of shape is it?
- What does it feel like? Bumpy, smooth, or juicy?
- Does it have a smell?
- What does it taste like? Is it sweet, salty, spicy or sour?
Converting Recipes to Child Sized Serves
Recipes we find online are typically designed to produce portions of food for adults or a family, rather than child sized serves. Typically, 1 adult serve = 2 child sized serves. So a recipe that says it serves 4, may in fact serve 8 children.
If you are looking at a recipe, here are some helpful tips to figure out how you could convert it to a child sized recipe.
- Is there meat in this recipe? Typically we would allocate 50g-75g of meat per child. So a recipe with 500g beef mince might serve 7-10 children.
- Are there vegetables in the recipe? For a main meal we aim to have 75g-100g vegetables per child. For 10 children, this would be 5 cups of vegetables, or 750g-1kg.
- Is there rice or pasta in the recipe? We can assume that we would provide 1/2 cup of cooked rice or pasta to a child. The raw weight of this is ~35g. So a 500g packet of pasta would serve ~14 children.
- Is it a baked item? Half portions of baked items may be more appropriate for children. A loaf pan that normally produces 10 slices (e.g. banana bread), might provide 20 child sized serves. Or a mini muffin tray could be used instead of a large muffin pan for a muffin recipe.
Once you have had a go at calculating how many child-sized serves a recipe produces, trial it to see how accurate you were, and adjust quantities if needed. The next step is scaling a recipe up or down to work out how much you need to prepare for the number of children at your centre. Click on the button below for tips on scaling recipes.
How Does Chocolate Grow?
Did you know that before being transformed into the creamy sweet snack that it is, chocolate started as a fruit! Here are some fun facts about the Cacao fruit that you can share with children at your centre this Easter.
Chocolate starts off as seeds (also called beans) that develop in pods on cacao trees.
The white flesh surrounding the cacao beans inside the pods is sweet.
Cacao is native to South and Central America, and now is grown in warm climates around the world. It grows in the most northern parts of Australia.
1000's of years ago, cacao beans were used as money in some ancient cultures!
The flowers on cacao tree rely on tiny insects called chocolate midges to move pollen from one flower to another so that the fruit can grow.
Once picked, cacao beans go through several steps before they are turned into what we call cocoa. Chocolate is usually made with cocoa, sugar and milk.
Click here to read more about the history of chocolate from National Geographic Kids.
All About Allergens Training
All about Allergens for Children’s Education and Care (CEC) is a free online training we recommend to all ECEC services that we work with.
The training is designed to help children’s education and care (CEC) providers and staff gain knowledge and understanding about food allergens, and develop best practice procedures to ensure the right food is given to the right child.
This course is also applicable to services where all children bring their food to the service. Even when food is being provided, there are still requirements to store food and supervise children eating.
Menu Planning in ECEC
FREE Workshop
This 2hr virtual workshop is included in Food Foundations subscription for cooks and chefs who work in ECEC settings. The workshop will give you ideas for creating menus with nourishing snacks and meals, and managing dietary requirements of children at your service. We hold one workshop each month. Click on the button below to find out more and register for the April workshop. We look forward to seeing you there!
Save the date!
Live Webinar: Positive food exposure through play based learning
12:30-1pm, Tuesday 24th June 2025
Save the date for this webinar with Leanne Elliston, CEO of Nutrition Australia ACT. Leanne will be sharing how we can help children to build positive relationships with food, and how educators can create a positive food culture through play based learning.
2025 Food Safety Supervisor Courses
We offer Food Safety Supervisor training for those working in early years, OSHC, aged care and disability settings. This practical course enables you to complete all assessment on the day, and is delivered by our team of experienced trainers who work within community settings. The course prepares food safety supervisors to supervise and oversee day to day operations and to prevent and recognise food safety hazards in their workplace through nationally recognised training.
Live Virtual and Face to Face Course Cost: $385
Click on the button below to register and find out more about the requirements for completing this course (please note the additional requirements for a live virtual course). The course runs from 9am-4pm. Upcoming courses available:
Thursday 24th April (Face to Face - Grange Community Hall)
Tuesday 20th May (Live virtual)
Tuesday 10th June (Live virtual)
Tuesday 1st July (Face to Face - Northgate Hall)
Tuesday 15th July (Live virtual)
If these options don’t suit, please don't hesitate to email us at training@naqld.org with your preferred date and time. We will try to accommodate your request if possible.
We also offer private courses delivered at your workplace for a minimum of 6 people ($385 per person). Please phone or email us to find out more.
Recipes
This month's recipes are our delicious Banana Pancakes and this Super Savoury Mince from No Money, No Time. Banana pancakes are a super simple morning or afternoon tea recipe, and also great to make as part of a cooking experience. The savoury mince recipe is so versatile and could be used for spaghetti bolognaise, on jacket potatoes, toast, or cottage pie. Converting this recipe to child sized serves, we think it would serve ~10 children. Try these recipes on your menu, or share these with families at your centre. Click on the buttons to download the recipes.
Training opportunities
Online Training
We offer self-paced online training programs through our partner In Safe Hands. Click on the following buttons for more information and to register.
Level 1 - Safe Food Handling for the Early Years Sector
Mealtimes, Food, and Nutrition for ECEC Educators (0 to 5 year olds)
Coming soon:
Advanced - Safe Food Handling for the Early Years Sector
Mealtimes, Food, and Nutrition for Kindergarten & Preschool (3 to 5 year olds)
Access links
Once logged in to the subscriber section of our website, access the following:
Do you have a question for the Food Foundations team?
Feel free to give us a call (07 3257 4393) or email through your questions to foodfoundations@naqld.org
Nutrition Australia
Ph: (07) 3257 4393
Email: foodfoundations@naqld.org
Website: www.naqld.org
Nutrition Australia acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land we work on and pays respect to Elders past, present and emerging.
