Lincolnshire dental team shares tips for healthy packed lunches
The summer holidays are now a distant memory, and a dental team from Lincolnshire is taking the chance to use the start of a new semester to educate children and parents about healthy eating.
Recently, statistics published by Public Health England suggested that a large proportion of children were consuming more than the recommended daily intake of sugar through snacks alone. To eradicate this problem, PHE officials launched a campaign to encourage healthy snacking, offering suggestions for low-sugar options, which contain less than 100 calories.
With children going back to school, and research suggesting that a poor diet is linked to the majority of cases of tooth decay in England, the team from Bupa Dental Care in Lincoln is offering advice to parents keen to provide their kids with a healthy lunchbox. Laura Edison, practice manager, suggests adding cheese, raw vegetables, sugar-free drinks and sandwiches made with wholegrain bread and advises parents to avoid crisps, biscuits, sweets, fizzy drinks and dried fruit products such as raisins.
In the run-up to the new term, teachers across the UK submitted stories about the worst packed lunches they had ever seen to The Mirror newspaper, with some truly startling results. Among the most alarming items, teachers mentioned dark cider, a can of shandy and a pork pie, cold McDonalds meals, Red Bull and a box that contained nothing but a packet of ginger biscuits.
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