Projects by Shaun Conaghan, The Active Nutrition Teacher

I designed a programme that we named “Eat Like a Champion Week.” Every day, the children volunteered to come to school an hour early, and stay for two hours after school finished. Every day for a week, we prepared and cooked five different breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks together as a group. We also included class shop visits, where we bought our ingredients in local supermarkets.

We sat at a table together and enjoyed the conversation and the food they helped to prepare, before tidying up together afterwards. The benefits of contributing and working together as a family or community on everyday tasks and objectives were also discussed over the course of week.

We started each day with ten minutes of mindfulness and enjoyed thirty minutes of cardiovascular exercise, before cooking our dinner. The programme aired on RTÉ (Ireland’s leading national television channel), on online streaming and social media platforms that enabled us to get our healthy message from the classroom to over a hundred thousand families, children and teachers around the country and abroad.

45.9% of Irish calories are now coming from ultra-processed foods. I wanted to design an empowering research project around the harmful effects of overconsuming processed foods. Together we investigated how to read labels and designed a display to show our school community exactly how much sugar, oil and salt are hidden in processed foods. We then investigated their link to the growth of chronic disease rates in Ireland. We also designed a survey to investigate how much processed foods children in our school were consuming. The results were both staggering and empowering. We shared our project findings at Ireland’s leading science fair “The Young Scientist Exhibition”. One startling finding in relation to sugar consumption was that children can safely consume between four and six bags of added sugar in a year. Irish children however, are averaging thirty-five bags per year. This makes Ireland the fourth greatest consumer of added sugar in the world. Again, I am proud to say that our research findings were also aired on national television, getting this empowering message into thousands of homes across the country.

• Lunchbox of the week: Every day I show the children a photo of my breakfast and take my lunch box to class to show them. This has developed into them showing me their lunch boxes each day. Here, the emphasis is on progress, and I celebrate each small incremental movement towards a healthier lunch box, such as switching from white bread or pasta to brown, or adding an extra portion of fruit or vegetables each day. Every Friday, I share my top five and most-improved healthy lunch boxes of the week with parents, through our school’s social media page.
• Taste-It Tuesday: On the first Tuesday of the month, we encourage the children to bring in either a fruit or vegetable, preferably an unusual one. They wash and chop it up and display it on their desk. They then walk around the classroom tasting some of the new, colourful fruits and vegetables that are on offer. This has been simple to run and very successful. The children go to great lengths to get unusual foods and have even discovered some nearby Asian markets.
• Progress Mondays/ Meat free Mondays/ Plant based Mondays: Every Monday, I encourage and challenge each child in my class to make healthy progress with their families. Some children attempt meat-free, some attempt going fully plant-based and some simply make an effort to add more whole grains, beans, fruits or vegetables to their meals. I praise all progress. Some families send in their “Progress Selfies” where they send me a photo of them sitting down to eat their meals as a family, and I share these selfies through our school’s social media page. The ripple effect of this in our school community is powerful.
• Snack like a Champion (Free fruit and Veg. stall): Once per week, we collect any leftover fruit from our state funded lunches, and offer them back to the children as a snack as they walk out of the school gate and home. I encourage them to “snack like a champion”. We also offer fruit to parents who are collecting the children to further communicate this good example. Children reported that this bridged the gap to their dinner and made them less likely to reach for junk food snacks, such as biscuits when they arrive home from school.

• Free “Why and How Plant-Based” e-book for families: I am currently in the process of writing a free e-book for parents, with reliable information on the benefits of eating a more plant-based diet. It includes endorsements and introductions from healthcare professionals, as well as five breakfast, five lunch box, five family dinner and five snack ideas to help get them started on their healthy journey. I would also be delighted to share this with the Plant-Based Healthcare Professional UK members, so that in turn, you can share with your patients.
• Parents information evenings: I had scheduled an event for this May, where I invited the community to an information evening on plant-based eating, with a talk from myself and Dr. Johnny Allman on the health benefits of eating more plants, as well as a cooking demonstration. This will now be rescheduled for a time when it is safe to do so, given the Covid-19 pandemic. I have also been invited to speak at national healthcare conference and in other schools, to inspire healthy community-based initiatives
• Lobby Government to act on updating nutritional guidelines, reliable nutrition education and environmental initiatives in schools: I will be lobbying government minsters and state organisations through our teachers’ unions, to take greater responsibility towards acknowledging the important role of a more plant-based diet as a solution to human health, the environment and to improve our chances of avoiding future pandemics. I will be seeking that the government introduce updated nutritional guidelines and education programmes and initiatives that reflect the science.