Menu planning in early childhood education and care services

About the NSW Menu Planning Guide

The NSW Menu Planning Guide helps early childhood education and care services to plan healthy menus for children from birth to 5 years. It provides practical, evidence-based advice to help cooks, chefs, meal planners, educators and directors create menus that:

support children’s growth and development needs
meet Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) National Quality Standards
align with the Australian Infant Feeding Guidelines (2012) and the Australian Dietary Guidelines (2013)
comply with food and beverage requirements under the Education and Care Services National Regulations (2011).

The guide provides a range of tools including ingredient quantity guides, menu checklists and sample menus to help services action the recommendations in the guide.

The NSW Menu Planning Guide replaces the Caring for Children: Birth to Five Years (2014) resource.

Need more help?

Your local health district’s health promotion team can support your service with menu reviews and practical advice.

You can find your local health promotion team on Munch & Move - Contacts and support.

How menu planning helps

Menu planning helps your service:

meet the nutritional needs of children in your care
provide varied meals
simplify meal preparation
plan food orders
manage a budget
reduce food waste.

Plan your service’s menu at least 2 weeks ahead. Make it a team effort and involve the chef, cook, director, educators, families and children.

Aim to give staff enough time and resources to plan and review menus.

What menus should include

Menus should include:

all the food offered each day
morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea for children in care for 8 hours
a variety of food and drink to meet the required serves from each food group
food and drink at the right texture and shape for a child’s age
options that meet the needs of children under 2 years
extra meals or snacks such as breakfast or late afternoon tea for children in care for more than 8 hours
water at all meal and snack times and throughout the day
a variety of tastes, textures, colours and flavours
foods from different cultures
different main meals for each day over a 2-week cycle.

Variety is important to give children a range of nutrients, tastes and textures. Try to change the menu so children who attend on set days each week have a variety of meals. Do not serve the same lunch meal twice in a fortnight.

Include menu items that children can self-serve or help to make, such as wraps and soft tacos.

Consider the cultural food preferences of families and local communities when planning your menu.