Cityserve to cut sugar stocked in Birmingham schools by 30 per cent

Birmingham City Council’s education catering division, Cityserve, has announced plans to cut the amount of sugar stocked by its schools by 30 per cent over the next year.

This will be achieved through menu development, product replacement and a nutritional education programme.

Cityserve’s head of service Dale Wild believes that more can be done to reduce the amount of ‘added sugar’ stocked by schools on top of that already contained in the meals produced.

He said: “As part of a review of our school stock reports, we found that while some schools are managing their larders very well with less than half a dozen kilos of sugar ordered per year, others exceeded this, prompting the question ‘can we reduce our sugar usage in every school?’

“All the meals we provide adhere to Government guidelines and the School Food Plan but we believe in always doing more, so we’re going to try to reduce the amount of extra sugar stocked by each school by 30% over the next 12 months through creative menu development, product replacement and by engaging pupils in an exciting nutritional education programme.”

Cityserve provides around 60,000 school meals across Birmingham.