A welcome feast for school cooks
centre
Doncaster
is to be the site of new £200,000 centre dedicated to
training school cooks in preparing healthy
meals.
It is one of
eight centres announced by The School Food Trust and will be called
a FEAST centre - Food Excellence and Skills Training. It will be
based at Doncaster College's Doncaster Waterfront
headquarters.
The centre will have a training kitchen for the whole region with a
practical area for up to 16 cooks to train at once.
It will be intended to provide cooks with the skills they need to
ensure school meals are of the highest quality and meet nutritional
standards, and is expected to be up and running by the middle of
next year. Doncaster health bosses are delighted the facility is
coming to the town.
Doncaster Primary Care Trust acting chief executive Christine
Boswell said: "We are keen to see Doncaster's young people enjoy a
healthy diet from an early age so I am delighted this new
partnership will support our drive to keep youngsters fit and
healthy."
Mayor Martin Winter described receiving the funding for the scheme
as a fantastic achievement.
Prue Leith, chair of the School Food Trust, said: "Training school
cooks is essential to improving the quality of the food served
within schools.
"Serving high-quality as well as nutritionally sound food will
result in more children eating the new healthy school meals, and I
hope it will encourage schools in this area to allow their cooks to
come on a course.
"School cooks, just like teachers and doctors, need to keep up
their skills and their enthusiasm."
The new centres will be established in Doncaster, Sunderland,
Manchester, Lancashire, Worcester, the East Midlands, and two in
the South East.