Students crunching their way to health

Above: Starla Way, 9, tucks into a cucumber. Picture: ISABELLA LETTINI

A MELON head filled with orange, celery sticks with sour cream and shaved carrot, and a banana tree were among the creative health snacks on the menu at Meadows Public School last Monday afternoon.

Each class was given the task of creating a healthy food snack as part of Fruit’n'Veg month, a joint government and industry initiative in conjunction with the Go for 2 fruit and 5 vegetables campaign.

Although the banana tree, made up of kiwi fruit, mandarins, rockmelon and bananas, was awarded best presented, it was the massive melon head with celery hair and curly apples with cherry tomatoes, which took out the most creative category.

In the end all 260 students were winners, retreating to the shade to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

Within minutes, the giant melon head was reduced to nothing by the eager students of classes 3/4N and K/1B.

Teacher Brian McKeawn, whose Year 5/6 class took out the fruit eating competition with a massive 212 pieces consumed among the 29 students in just one week, said he despised packaged food.

“There is no reason why all kids can’t eat proper food,” he said.

One of his students, Amber, who couldn’t wait to munch down a fruit stick, said fruit was yummy and better than eating chips.

As part of the Crunch and Sip program, students pause for five minutes at about 1.25pm every day to crunch down a piece of fruit and sip on some water.

The entire student body consumed in excess of 1000 pieces of fruit during the Fruit’n'Veg healthy eating competition which ran from September 8 to 12.

There won’t be elaborate fruit boats or melon skewers any more, but the school has invested in the long term health of all students by buying a Meadows school bottle for each child to fill with water.