A Picture of Early Years Food

Through the Nourishing Our Future project, we worked directly with day nurseries, preschools and childminders to gather the largest ever visual collection of photos from an early years research project, depicting the food that children are eating in settings across Essex.

At the Nourishing Our Future conference, we explored what these images tell us about children’s food experiences, the challenges and opportunities in early years food provision, and how we can work together to ensure that every child has access to nutritious food and meaningful food education.

Key Headlines

• Childminders demonstrated the lowest quantities of processed foods
• Day nurseries displayed the highest variation in portion sizes across the 428 photos analysed.
• 70% of children’s lunch in Preschools is parent provided (i.e lunchboxes).

Context is Important

At the Nourishing Our Future conference, we had an incredibly insightful panel discussion sparked by a single one of these photos – a child’s lunch that consisted of two doughnuts. It prompted reflection on food poverty but also on another important reality that is less talked about; being time poor.

Poverty takes many forms, and it’s not always financial.

After the session, the practitioners who had submitted the photo came to speak with me. They shared something powerful; the child whose lunchbox contained two doughnuts that day had been sent with a salmon salad on Monday. But after a week of uneaten healthy meals, by Friday, the mother packed the only thing she knew her child would eat.

This is the reality of food and nutrition in the early years. It is complex. And context is everything.

• We must support all families.
• Every single parent, practitioner and child is navigating their own challenges.
• This must change.

We need to move beyond judgment and towards understanding, support, and systemic change. Because ensuring young children have access to nutritious food isn’t just about what’s in a lunchbox, it’s about the world that we create around them.

Photo Provocation

You can join us in sharing your thoughts through our photo provocation invitation to sample some of the photo collection:

• What do you see?
• What do you feel?
• What do you think?
• What would you say?

If you work in the early years, what does a ‘typical day on your plate’ look like? Leave us a comment below!

*Please note, the images in this gallery are the property of the Nourishing Our Future (NOF) project and are shared for viewing purposes only. Unauthorised use, reproduction, redistribution, or modification of these images is strictly prohibited. These photos may not be copied, downloaded, or used for personal, commercial, or promotional purposes without explicit written permission from the NOF team.

For inquiries regarding image use, please contact NOF@aru.ac.uk.