Brian Kyle of Pritchitts with Graeme Guthrie and Lucy Alexander

Education Award Winner 2007

2nd May 2007, 4:35pm

Sponsored by Pritchitts

Graham Guthrie
Sunderland City Council

From a background in the health development unit of Sunderland Teaching Primary Care Trust, Graham moved to the school meals service three years ago when obesity began to be recognized as a serious problem among young people. Since then he has set up a Food in Schools Team that consists of a coordinator, a dietitian and four workers. Within four months it had visited 31 schools, carried out 400 training sessions for 6,000 children and boosted meal uptake in primary schools by 7%. Other innovations include a fitness programme run jointly with Sunderland FC, nutrition training, special schools menu development, after school cooking clubs and the development of a school meals cooking book to help children and parents become more familiar with school dinners. Knowing the need for a long-term approach to healthy eating, he has also developed a school food strategy for the city for the next three years that will be implemented from September.