In this week’s episode of The Whole Circle Podcast we talk to Nikki Cassar about how to create an additive-free school canteen.

In our eyes, Nikki is a superstar!  She saw that the canteen at her children’s school wasn’t additive-free which meant that she just couldn’t allow her kids to eat food from there.

Fast forward to when a position became available to work in the school canteen and she was all in! In her interview, she stipulated that she would only take on the role if the school allowed her to make the canteen completely additive-free! ??????

Needless to say, she got the position and she has gone onto overhaul the whole school canteen to be fully additive-free!

Seriously… how AWESOME is she?!

In addition to this, the canteen is not just additive-free, they also use organic or chemical-free produce wherever possible which they source from a farm 15 minutes away from the school as well as they use their own school garden for produce or source locally where they can.  They use very little plastic.  The cleaners of the school have even commented on how little rubbish there now is in the playground!

They have plenty of variety and have different foods to serve every day, which means the kids are trying different foods all the time.

Truly AMAZING!

Change like this doesn’t happen overnight.

How did the change come about?

The canteen at Grahamstown Public School was a P&C run canteen.  This changed to then being a school run canteen which opened up a position to work in the canteen, which is the position that Nikki applied for.

When the canteen was P&C run it was a ‘heat and serve’ canteen which meant that the food choices were mostly additive and preservative-laden.

When it changed over to school run and Nikki took over the running of it, she changed the food to homemade food that is made from scratch every single day.

What started Nikki’s journey of living additive-free?

She had always been health conscious in relation to what she was feeding her kids, but it wasn’t until her son developed eczema with constant flare-ups that she researched additives and preservatives and decided to remove them all from their diets.

They had always shopped in the health food aisle at the supermarket as they thought they were good food choices, not knowing that in actual fact a lot of the foods in that aisle are full of additives.

Through this research Nikki then completed our Additive-Free Made Easy e-course and dived deep into it all and how additive and preservative-laden foods can contribute to all sorts of health and behavioural issues.

Now that they have been additive-free for some time, if her kids go somewhere and eat additive filled foods, even if she is not with them, she can tell within an hour because their behaviour changes.  They become irritable, cranky and behaviourally they are quite challenging.  So now she makes everything from scratch and avoids additives and preservatives wherever she can.

It was a big transition for their family, but they have seen the benefits and she is now excited to educate other families on how to live additive-free and the massive benefits for living this way.

What was the school’s reaction to Nikki wanting to overhaul the canteen?

The school was excited but nervous.  They were unsure how the parents or teachers would react.  A massive change like this can spark fear of the unknown.

Thankfully it has been embraced and they are seeing so many benefits.

Waste is down a fact of which the cleaners absolutely love because it makes their job easier and is great for the environment too.

Kids are also now eating fruits and vegetables when they normally wouldn’t have and adding extra nutrition and variety into their diets.

When Jo was still living in Queensland and her school canteen was P&C run, they did some fundraising to get a Thermomix into the canteen.  There was so much negative feedback around this, people were saying it was a waste of money.  But the reason was so that they could cook a lot more from scratch and create an additive-free canteen too.

Was the s