Food and Fitness Programme celebrates keynote birthday in 2025

For the past two decades and more, this unique initiative has played an important role in communicating the key themes associated with a healthy lifestyle – and the benefits of dairy nutrition in this context – to primary school children, their parents, carers and teachers throughout Northern Ireland.

Moreover, as the years have passed demand for the programme has increased at an exponential rate.

Driving all of this is the fact that Food and Fitness is a fun educational programme for everyone involved. It is made available by a team of two, undergraduate students, undertaking their industrial placements. They are specifically trained by the Dairy Council to make a real and tangible impact while they are in the classroom.

So, at a very fundamental level, we have a scenario of young generation Z adults interacting with generation Alpha primary school children in ways that both of these closely aligned demographic groups understand.

The credibility of the programme is reflected in the growing demand from teachers to have it as a fundamental part of the school programme, which they want to follow with their pupils.

The current academic year will see approximately 24,000 Key Stage 2 Primary 5 and 6 children, who attend schools across Northern Ireland, participating in the Food and Fitness Programme.

This is based on a total of three presentations per day, where the Food and Fitness team interacts with the pupils at every presentation.

Food and Fitness is fully funded by the Dairy Council and is provided free of charge to schools, it is demand driven by the responses received from primary school teachers, who are reminded of the programme’s availability prior to the start of each academic year.

This is a very clear and positive example of how the farmer and processor levy is used by the Dairy Council to profile the benefits of milk as part of a healthy diet and lifestyle.

The children of today are the active consumers of tomorrow. The Dairy Council was established to represent an authoritative and impartial information source regarding the role played by milk and milk products in a healthy diet.

Forging a strong working relationship with schools has been critically important in making this happen. And the Food and Fitness programme has been a central part of the Dairy Council’s education activity for the past 21 years.

But success can also lead to the creation of new challenges. Requests from schools for the Food and Fitness presentation can outweigh the number of opportunities that we are able to provide throughout the school year and we try to reach as many pupils as we can within the resources available for the programme.

Teachers respect the values of the Food and Fitness initiative and its relevance within the curriculum they are delivering.

So, it’s important for the Dairy Council to fully recognise these very positive realities and build on this for the future.

Last year saw the Stormont Executive publish its Food Strategy Framework. Priority number one within this policy overview centres on the need to develop strong connections between health/wellbeing and food.

Ensuring this all-important message is communicated effectively to school children of all ages is of critical significance. And it is in this context that the Food and Fitness programme is already playing a key role.

So much for the background: it is important to relate how the programme is coordinated and what it actually delivers in the classroom.

The Dairy Council recruits two Ulster University Food and Nutrition BSc placement students each year. They are given training to deliver the presentation before heading out into the primary schools.

The 45-minute interactive presentation explores the concept of a balanced diet and active lifestyle with Key Stage 2 pupils and includes a focus on the role of milk and dairy products.

The benefits of a healthy, balanced diet are communicated using the ‘food wheel’ – looking at the different food groups, which foods are included in which food group, the benefits of the different groups and the right balance between them.

We know that children’s perception of a healthy diet can sometimes centre almost exclusively on fruit and vegetables, and dairy may not be ‘front of mind’.

Food and Fitness highlights dairy’s place in a balanced diet.

The presentation also looks at physical activity; different activities the children might do which count as exercise, how much is recommended and how the children can achieve this during the day.

The programme’s delivery team use colourful props, educational games and fun exercise activity sessions, along with the Food and Fitness ‘rap’ to fully engage the children.

Significantly, the teacher resource pack, which accompanies the Food and Fitness programme, continues the theme of a balanced diet and an active lifestyle and provides teachers with extension activities for children to do in the classroom. The programme is also complemented by an information booklet for the pupils to take home to their parents.

Some schools also post on social media about our Food and Fitness visits, extending awareness of the programme further still.

The programme went virtual during Covid with a video on the Dairy Council website ensuring pupils didn’t miss out.

This programme is free to all schools who participate.

We have previously evaluated the effectiveness of the Food and Fitness programme in communicating the benefits of activity and a balanced diet, including the role of milk and dairy foods.

Following a Food and Fitness presentation, the children’s knowledge of a healthy lifestyle including healthy eating and activity was enhanced, and their understanding of the role of dairy foods in the diet improved.

The number of children who correctly identified how much they should be eating from each of the five food groups significantly improved.

In relation to dairy foods, prior to receiving the Food and Fitness programme, 20% of children thought that they should eat only a ‘small amount’ of milk and dairy foods: this fell to just 4% after the team visited.

Similarly, the number answering correctly that dairy food should make up a ‘medium’ part of their diet increased from around half to 80%.

Children’s knowledge of other aspects of healthy diet and lifestyle also improved including knowledge of the importance of physical activity.

Response from the children to the programme overall is very positive, especially its interactive nature, which is integral to its effective communication, with children citing ‘the rap’, the ‘dairy game’ and the ‘exercise’ aspects as some of their favourite parts.

The 2024-25 school year is now well underway, and our two students Chloe and Sara have been travelling the length and breadth of Northern Ireland to deliver the programme and the enthusiasm and positivity they receive from pupils across the region is tremendous.