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Smart Choices - Assessing Menu Items
The Queensland Government’s Smart Choices- Healthy Food and Drink Supply Strategy for Queensland Schools is mandatory for all state schools and strongly encouraged for non-state schools.
Want to rate a product or menu item with specific nutritional information? You’ve come to the right place.
Rating tuckshop-made menu items
Making menu items from scratch can give you more control over ingredients, meaning fewer industrial-style additives, lower salt and sugar, and a higher content of fruit and vegetables.
For the healthiest recipes, always try to use lean meats, skin-free chicken, reduced fat dairy, and unsaturated fats and oils.
Most recipes made from scratch will be rated as GREEN, unless you are using unhealthy ingredients, such as pastry, butter, cream, or coconut milk/cream.
If you want to test your recipe against the Smart Choices nutrition criteria, FSANZ have a useful Nutrition Panel Calculator* which can generate a Nutrition Information Panel, allowing you to use our Smart Choices Calculator, below.
Smart Choices Calculator
Rating packaged products
If you have a product that you are unsure of, you can use the Smart Choices Calculator to rate the item. Note that you may need certain nutrition information, usually found on the Nutrition Information Panel on the back of the package. Also note that all packaged, processed products assessed using this calculator will be, at best, rated as AMBER. You can fast track your search by selecting the category of your item below, and follow the prompts.
Find out how to improve your menu rating
Click on the LEARN ABOUT RATINGS button in the relevant category below to find out how to increase the GREEN rated items on your menu by making simple changes.
Hot Meal
Hot Meal Recommendations
Cold and hot meals offer the greatest opportunity to increase the proportion of GREEN items on a menu.
Nearly all menus have core GREEN items by offering a selection of cold meals including sandwiches, wraps and rolls. Menus can be improved greatly by:
Increasing the number of other GREEN food choices available. Use the Recipe section of this website to find simple recipes able to be made on site.
When serving AMBER foods as a meal, eg chicken strips and hamburgers, take opportunities to include salad or vegetable items. These items should not be offered as an optional extra.
Limiting the number of AMBER ONLY meals available or eliminate them all together. These items compete with the efforts made to offer the better choices.
Cold Meal
Cold Meal Recommendations
Cold and hot meals offer the greatest opportunity to increase the proportion of GREEN items on a menu.
Nearly all menus have core GREEN items by offering a selection of cold meals including sandwiches, wraps and rolls. Menus can be improved greatly by:
Increasing the number of other GREEN food choices available. Use the Recipe section of this website to find simple recipes able to be made on site.
When serving AMBER foods as a meal, eg chicken strips and hamburgers, take opportunities to include salad or vegetable items. These items should not be offered as an optional extra.
Limiting the number of AMBER ONLY meals available or eliminate them all together. These items compete with the efforts made to offer the better choices.
Drink
Drink Recommendations
By simply limiting the number and variety of drink items on the menu, but still keeping the GREEN options, a menu will be improved. GREEN drink options include reduced fat unflavoured milk and plain water. Once small portions of 99% juice and reduced fat flavoured milk are included, this provides plenty of variety on the menu. Ensure milk is reduced fat and avoid large serve sizes of flavoured milks that are high in sugar. The supply of RED items is limited, so these drinks should not be on a tuckshop menu.
Snack
Snack Recommendations
GREEN snack items are mostly represented on menus as variations of fruit items, reduced fat dairy items and unflavoured snacks like plain popcorn. Almost all other compliant snack items including frozen treats will fall within the AMBER category and only a limited number of these should be offered.
By simply limiting the number and variety of snack items on a menu, but still keeping all GREEN options, a menu will be improved. Ensure all dairy items are reduced fat options. The supply of RED items is limited, so these snacks should not be on a tuckshop menu.
*Copyright
© Commonwealth of Australia and Food Standards Australia New Zealand, 2020
Provided you comply fully with the Terms of Use, FSANZ grants you a worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access, display and use the Nutrition Panel Calculator. You are free to display, download, print, reproduce, communicate and adapt material generated from the Nutrition Panel Calculator for your own personal or commercial use or use within your organisation.