If only helping children with medical needs and allergies was that simple! The fact is that many children cannot tolerate a range of foodstuffs and a great deal of care and attention is needed to ensure that the meals for each child are suitable.
When a parent prepares a meal for a child, they know exactly what ingredients have been used. When we prepare a meal for a child, we want the parent to be as confident about what’s gone into the meal as if they had prepared it themselves. Catering for every single child is an integral part of the Catering Leeds service.
Medical, religious or cultural … all diets can be catered for.
Medical Diets
Whatever the medical diet, we can provide a meal which meets it. We have experience of providing meals for most medical allergies and intolerances ranging from coeliac to nut and nut derivatives, milk and milk derivatives, egg and egg derivatives, diabetic and many other combinations to the much more complex and rare PKU diet.
Where required, we work closely with hospital dieticians and provide site specific training for kitchen staff to ensure all individual diets can be safely provided and often utilise specialist ingredients to make regular dishes suitable, i.e. making a gluten free crumble.
Halal
Many schools across the city have a clear proportion of children who require a halal meal and we are happy to provide this. Any meals that include halal meat are clearly identified and are only offered to children who require one.
We train all out staff on the background to halal provision and why it is important to the communities we serve. Our high standards ensure that our halal meals contain only halal meat and halal suitable components and we have the utmost confidence in our sourcing and traceability of all our halal products.
Our procedures for storage, preparation, cooking and serving halal meals are strictly adhered to preventing cross contamination. In fact we regularly audit the premises and procedures of our suppliers to ensure they continue to meet our standards.
Vegetarian
Many children follow a vegetarian diet for religious or ethical reasons, we can provide a daily vegetarian option that’s exciting, eye catching and tastes absolutely great. In fact even our most committed meat eaters too. You can expect our staff to be fully trained and following clear procedures to ensure there is no cross contamination during storage, preparation, cooking and serving.
