Nutrition

We are sure that like us, most of you would agree that there is no greater influence on our health than the food we eat. It appears however, that as the quality of our food has declined so has the rise in any number of related conditions, what we see in schools only serves to reflect this as we witness the growing numbers of overweight children, and the increase in attention problems and other behavioural challenges.

"There is a body of evidence which links children’s diets to their immediate and long-term health, whilst experience from schools suggests when children eat a balanced diet they find it easier to concentrate in the classroom and their behaviour is significantly improved.

Diet is increasingly being seen as central to unlocking the potential of children as well as being critical to their health. Improved nutrition and food habits can play a part in enhancing well-being and emotional welfare, and are an important part of addressing the need to reduce the number of overweight and obese children." School Food Trust 201"

Zest Nutritional Standards

Our nutritional standards reflect both our acknowledgement of respected organisations such as the School Food Trust and Slow Food USA, which especially highlight the benefits of locally sourced produce, and our own knowledge, experience and intuition that has resulted from our inherent passion for our work.

At the heart of our nutrition philosophy is the belief that healthy, ‘living’ soils provide for healthy vegetation and form the foundation for the complete food chain. We believe that not only do natural whole foods taste far better but contain much higher nutrient value and are produced in a manner that helps to support the environment.
Zest & Nutrition

Zest uses Saffron nutritional software to analyse all our recipes, to ensure your child constantly receives a balanced and fulfilling Lunch.

Saffron Nutrition is an extremely powerful nutritional analysis tool which provides us with a detailed product, and nutritional information for all our ingredients and recipes. 

Accordingly, we have set ourselves standards to which we strive to adhere.
The 10 Zest nutrition standards are as follows:
Balanced meals – achieve a balance of good quality macro-nutrients, micro-nutrients, raw and cooked foods.
Local – we favour fresh , locally sourced produce.
Unprocessed – we favour whole foods, and minimise the use of refined produce.
Organic – where possible, if not, we attempt to minimise the chemical load and the use of additives.
Fats – we use only good quality fats, if exposing oils/fats to heat we try to use only those stable under such conditions.
Salt – we favour natural unprocessed salts over nutritionally depleted refined salts.
Sugar – we aim to reduce simple sugar content and minimise the use of artificial sweeteners.
Fruits/Vegetables – we promote fresh seasonal produce as much as possible.
Support – we support local farmers who farm to our standards.
Respect – we are aware and sensitive to individual needs/ dietary restrictions.

Individual Requirements

At Zest we recognize that everyone has different dietary needs and therefore endeavour to provide choice, variety and balance to optimise our ability to meet those individual requirements. Should you or your child have any special considerations/restrictions, we will do our upmost to help, indeed we would be happy to consider any requests you may have. We encourage you to get involved and to this end we plan to arrange future events to educate, inform, entertain and hopefully inspire – we invite you to regularly revisit these pages and above all to share our passion for food!