A WORCESTERSHIRE and a Herefordshire school have been honoured by the Prince of Wales for their commitment to healthy and sustainable eating.

The first annual Food for Life Partnership Awards, run by the Soil Association, were held last week at The Royal Society of Arts, London.

Prince Charles, who has long spoken about the importance of educating young people about where their food comes from, showed his support for the movement by presenting a number of awards on the night.

The Food for Life Partnership Mark was awarded to schools dedicated to transforming their food culture. It rewards step-by-step progress by schools and caterers towards gold standard for food quality and education.

Schools joining the partnership commit to achieving a bronze mark or higher within two years.

John Masefield High School in Ledbury and Franche Community Primary in Kidderminster both received bronze awards.

They are both members of Heart of England Fine Foods, the regional food group for the West Midlands, and participate in healthy eating schemes run by the not-for-profit group, which they say has helped them achieve these awards.

HEFF has 23 schools across the West Midlands signed up as members and run two school projects to promote healthy eating and encourage the use of local produce.

The V Machine is a vending machine stocked with regional, healthy snacks and the S Bar is a smoothie bar which uses local fruit and milk. Both of these schemes are heavily subsidised by HEFF and comply with the Government’s healthy eating guidelines.

John Masefield High School has a V Machine and school business manager Wendy Bradbeer says the scheme has proved a great success.

“Having the V Machine has made a big difference,” he said. “We’ve put it into our sixth form block and they are using it a lot. We’re very glad we’ve done it and wish we’d have done it sooner.”

Franche Community Primary School has an S Bar which headteacher Val Weddell-Hall says is helping to educate the children about food.

“The Smoothie Bar is helping the children to understand what different things you can do with food and where it comes from,” she said.

“One example is that we took some of our year six pupils to a pick-your-own and picked strawberries which we then used for smoothies.”