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Long day care menus are assessed against the Healthy Eating Advisory Service’s Menu planning guidelines for long day care.
These guidelines outline criteria for main meals, morning tea, afternoon tea and drinks to plan a menu for children aged 1-5 years old.
Read more about long day care menu assessments.
Not at the moment. For guidelines, advice and support with providing healthy food and drinks in early childhood services, visit our website.
FoodChecker looks at all the foods and drinks supplied on the menu for one day or one week.
For advice and suggestions on making individual meals and snacks healthier, visit our website.
Read more about long day care menu assessments.
If your long day care centre provides a second course after lunch, enter this meal in the 'lunch' section. When asked, select 'no' to the vegetarian meal question.
Use FoodChecker to plan healthy canteen menus that meet the Victorian Government’s School Canteens and Other School Food Services Policy.
The Policy classifies foods and drinks based on their nutritional content:
Learn more about the School Canteens and Other School Food Services Policy here.
FoodChecker assesses retail food outlet menus, catering menus and vending machines against the Victorian Government’s Healthy Choices guidelines. These guidelines use a traffic light classification system to categorise foods and drinks as GREEN, AMBER, or RED based on their nutritional content.
Retail outlet menus, catering menus and vending machines should have at least 50% GREEN food and drinks items, and no more than 20% RED. And only GREEN and AMBER food and drinks should be supplied in catering.
Read more about assessing retail outlet menus, catering and vending machines.
Use this guide (PDF 778KB) to understand how to count food and drink items when doing a retail outlet menu assessment in FoodChecker.
This will ensure the percentages of GREEN, AMBER and RED food and drinks are calculated accurately according to the Healthy Choices guidelines.
From late 2019, Queensland hospitals and health services have been supported to use FoodChecker to assess the foods only supplied in retail outlets and vending machines to support the implementation of the A Better Choice – Healthy Food and Drink Supply Strategy for Queensland Health Facilities. The A Better Choice criteria for foods aligns with the Victorian Healthy Choices criteria for foods only.
In August 2021, the Healthy Eating Advisory Service and the Queensland Government updated the assessment options for Queensland hospitals and health services, to include the full A Better Choice criteria for foods and drinks.
This also includes the specific targets for the percentage of GREEN, AMBER and RED foods and drinks in retail outlet menus and vending machines.
FoodChecker classifies products as GREEN, AMBER, RED or BLACK using criteria from the Victorian Government’s School Canteen and Other School Food Services Policy and the Healthy Choices guidelines.
There are two ways to find out a product’s classification in FoodChecker:
Find out more about the criteria below:
We have taken care to ensure that classifications are accurate, however product information can change, and unforeseen errors may occur.
If you believe a classification is incorrect please first check the product’s information against the classification criteria below to confirm if whether or not it is classified correctly:
If you still believe a product classification is incorrect, please report an error here. We will review your report within 3-5 business days and let you know if any action needs to be taken.
Please note: The School Canteen and Other School Food Services Policy and the Healthy Choices guidelines were developed and are managed by the Victorian Government, not the Healthy Eating Advisory Service or Nutrition Australia Vic Division.
If you would like to provide feedback to the Victorian Government on the School Canteen and Other School Food Services Policy and/or the Healthy Choices guidelines, please send an email here and your comments will be passed on to the appropriate contact.
If you would like to assess a product that is not in the database, you can classify it by entering some information from the packaging.
From the ‘Search product’ screen, click ‘Assess new product’, then select a category and complete the form. (TIP: If you are logged in, click ‘Save product’ to use it again in future.)
If you are interested in having your company's foods and drinks listed on FoodChecker, please complete this expression of interest form.
Most information about the branded food and drink products in FoodChecker are supplied by an external database, but we also add other products at our discretion.
All product information is either sourced direct from the company or via publicly available information, such as packaging and websites.
If you would like to report an error, or to query a classification, please contact us.
We hope that this tool will be easy and simple enough for you to complete your assessment yourself. However if you’d prefer us to complete the assessment, please contact Nutrition Australia Vic Division on 03 8341 5800 or email us. Please note this service will attract a fee.