Healthy Eating

At Exeter House School we promote healthy eating but recognise that many of our students have extremely restricted diets/ AFRID (Avoidant/ Restrictive Food Intake Disorder) diagnosed or undiagnosed, which is closely linked to their complex needs and particularly prevalent within the Autism population, which now constitutes over 80% of our student cohort.

In order to extend the range of healthy foods our student will eat we have the following in place:

School Lunches

All KS1 students are provided with a free school meal however, we encourage parents to also send in a packed lunch. We try the students with the school meal to help start expanding the diet that they will eat. However if they do not eat it they can then have their packed lunch to ensure that they have eaten something.

Throughout the rest of the school students have the choice of a school lunch or a packed lunch.

Whole school approach to eating:

Staff have received theoretical and practical training focusing on the whole school approach to eating.

The training recognised challenges that are specific to our student cohort (i.e. atypical eating behaviours affect up to 70.4% of the Autism population) and provided practical ideas and clear objectives which to follow whilst supporting our pupils, especially those severely affected by AFRID/ restricted diets.

This approach has been rolled out across classes and adapted to suit the extremely varying needs across the school.

Part of this approach that is most prevalent and most commonly used by classes is ‘Food Explorers’.

Food Explorers

Because many of our students have a restricted diet we have timetabled session in classes called food explorers to support them eating a wider range of foods as well as develop positive relationships with food, alongside focusing on varying their diets and leading to making increasingly healthier eating choices.

What is food explorers

Exploring food through multi-sensory experiences.
Learning about food with no expectation to eat.
Exposing children to unfamiliar or new foods.
Developing comfort levels around foods.
Fun and possibly messy!!!

Why is food explorers necessary

Children who explore foods regularly are more likely to try new foods.
Children who explore foods without the pressure of needing to eat it are more
Likely to develop a healthy relationship with food.

PSHE Curriculum

Our PSHE curriculum including lessons on Healthy Eating and the benefits of physical exercise