The NOF Award supports early years settings across Essex, including childminders as well as day nurseries and pre schools, to implement the new EYFS Nutrition Guidance (DfE, 2025), creating healthier food foundations for young children and families.
The NOF Award offers a dedicated space that includes practical guidance, support, training, and resources to help early years educators, parents and carers to embed good nutrition, food education, and positive mealtime experiences into everyday practice.
Whether you’re just beginning your healthy eating journey or looking to build upon strong foundations, the NOF Award helps you grow with confidence, celebrating progress through an accreditation framework and connecting you with like minded professionals.
Together, we position Essex as a leading example of how early years settings can champion children’s lifelong health and wellbeing through collective action and excellence.
Starting off in Rooting, early years settings commit to signing up, appointing a nutrition lead, starting food education, creating food policies, training staff, involving families, promoting sustainability, and collecting feedback.
Building on from Rooting, Sprouting builds on the basics by embedding food education across EYFS, improving mealtime environments, gathering children’s voices, sharing good practice, deepening staff training, engaging families, and promoting sustainability.
Blooming recognises leadership in nutrition practice settings work closely with families, involve children in planning and food prep, review provision regularly, train all staff, showcase sustainable practices, promote public health services, and gather impact evidence through parent feedback.
By collaborating in this way, we are improving practice in our own settings and helping to make Essex a national leader in children’s food, drink, nutrition, health and wellbeing.
We believe that every child in Essex deserves the knowledge, nurturing and nourishment they need to thrive.
We believe that every child in Essex deserves the knowledge, nurturing and nourishment they need to thrive.
We are part of a growing movement, sharing ideas and learning from each other across nurseries, childminders and pre schools.
Download the toolkit
This toolkit details the aims and objectives of the NOF award alongside each of the award levels, clearly listing the criteria and expectations, as well as the partner agencies involved in the programme.
