CHILDREN at Kempsey Primary School are turning their backs on biscuits and chocolate bars in favour of healthy fruit and vegetables.

Pupils and staff have worked together to win a Healthy Schools Award by eating healthier snacks and drinking more milk and water over a six-month period.

"We opted to increase the amount of fruit and vegetables eaten at the mid-morning break and increase the amount of milk and water drunk at school," said headteacher Heather Simpson.

"We produced an action plan and collected lots of data to produce bar charts of the numbers of apples eaten in each class each week.

With the help of parents, who were kept informed of what we were doing, it went up significantly over the six months."

Each child was given a water bottle, to be kept in class and topped up during the day, and staff held a fruit tasting morning, when youngsters could try exotic fruit such as pineapple, mango and kiwi, which they might not have tasted before.

Healthier

Now that the school has won the award, given by Worcestershire County Council in association with the Health Authority, pupils are continuing to eat healthier snacks.

Eating fruit and vegetables helps reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease and it is believed that healthy eating habits formed in childhood can prevent disease later in life.

Encouraging children to eat more fruit and vegetables is being promoted by the New Opportunities Fund, using £10m of Lottery money to make sure that all four to six-year-olds in West Midlands schools can enjoy a free piece of fruit every day.

In Worcestershire, 176 schools are taking part in the programme and 19,281 children are receiving fruit.