What do children eat at daycare?

It comes up on nearly every tour. Somewhere between the cot room and the sandpit, a parent asks what the children actually eat all day, and whether their particular eater, the fussy one, the dairy-free one, the one who would live on crackers if permitted, will be fed properly.

Fair question. Food is a big part of a day in care, and centres handle it in two quite different ways. Two of our centres cook every meal on site. The other two run preschool-style, where families pack most of the food. Here is what each looks like in practice.

Five meals a day, cooked on site

At Normanhurst Child Care Centre and West Ryde Long Day Care, everything comes out of the centre kitchen. Dianne cooks at Normanhurst, Lorna at West Ryde, and each runs her own kitchen with a 4-week rotating menu.

Five meals across an 11-hour day sounds like a lot until you see the day laid out. At West Ryde it runs roughly like this: breakfast for the early arrivals between 7:00 and 8:30 (toast, cereal, porridge, fruit), morning tea at 9:30, a hot cooked lunch between 11:30 and 12:30, afternoon tea at 2:30, then a light snack at 4:30 to take the edge off the ride home for the children staying late.

A real day from the menu

Rather than describe it in the abstract, here is a Monday taken straight from the current Normanhurst menu:

• Breakfast: Weet-Bix or Cornflakes
• Morning tea: wholegrain corn thins with orange slices, topped with vegemite, sliced cheese, ham or avocado
• Lunch: beef and vegetable pasta bake with wholemeal pasta. Babies from 0 to 9 months get a puree of chicken breast and vegetables instead, and the vegetarian option is a vegetable pastie with broccoli, carrots, peas, baby spinach and lentils in filo pastry
• Afternoon tea: fresh fruit and vegetable platter with wholemeal pikelets, cheese and Greek yoghurt dip
• Late afternoon tea: assorted wholemeal sandwiches

Notice the split at lunch. A kitchen on site means babies get purees matched to their stage rather than a mashed version of whatever the big kids are having, and the vegetarian option is a proper dish, not the main meal with something removed.

Normanhurst's menu is approved under Munch & Move, the NSW Health program for early childhood services, and the rotation means children see a dish again every four weeks, which is roughly how long it takes a two-year-old to decide that the thing they refused last month is now their favourite.

How you know what your child ate

Menus go up where families can see them, and meals are logged through the OWNA app during the day. If your daughter skipped lunch but demolished afternoon tea, you will know before pick-up, which tends to settle the "will she starve" worry fairly quickly.

Allergies and intolerances

All four of our centres are nut-aware: we ask families to leave nut products at home. At the two cooking centres, allergies, intolerances and vegetarian diets are handled directly in the kitchen where the food is made. You tell us what your child needs at enrolment, and Dianne or Lorna plans around it. No separate lunchbox required.

The preschool model: you pack, we top up

Roseville Kindergarten and St Ives Chase Kindergarten work the other way around. Families pack morning tea and lunch in labelled containers, and the centre provides afternoon tea for children staying extended hours.

Packing for preschool has its own small art, and both centres publish a guide to what works: Roseville's lunchbox suggestions and St Ives Chase's version. Educators check lunchboxes each day, and anything containing nuts is set aside until home time.

What it means for the fee

At Normanhurst and West Ryde, all five meals are included in the daily fee, along with formula for the babies. There is nothing to pack beyond a change of clothes, a comforter and a water bottle. At the preschools, the daily fee is lower and the lunchbox is yours. Both models work; they just suit different mornings. Our guide to daily fees sets out exactly what each centre includes.

And if you would like to judge the cooking for yourself, the smell of lunch mid-morning is one of the better arguments for booking a tour.