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Returning for a fourth year, the competition saw over 40 schools compete to win the Tilda Together Day with Kinross scooping the prize, thanks to home economics teacher, Catriona Cairney’s winning entry.

Over 160 pupils from across the school got involved in the activities with the home economics class enjoying a nutritional talk and cookery lesson from  dietitian and nutritionist Lucy Upton. The Geography students learnt about the school-feeding charity from Mary’s Meals ambassador, Richard Lloyd and the English classes packed backpacks to support the charity’s valuable work in Malawi.

Speaking about winning the day, Cairney said: “It was such a wonderful surprise to win! As a school we have supported Mary’s Meals and the Tilda Together Day has been a great way to once again raise the profile of Mary’s Meals throughout the whole school. It also links in well with our food of the world course where we look at how rice is a staple food across the globe. Our pupils have learnt so much – it’s been a really good day!”

Tilda Together provides a platform to share with school pupils the nutritional role rice plays as part of a balanced diet to help feed healthy bodies and minds. Recommended by the School Food Standards, Tilda’s Brown & White rice is a 50:50 blend of wholegrain and white rice.

Talking about the day, Annette Coggins, head of foodservice at Tilda UK said: “The Tilda Together Day has been beyond our expectations and I was blown away to see the pupils cooking a cuisine they normally wouldn’t get to try and really embracing the flavours.

“I was genuinely moved by the Mary’s Meals talk and it was fantastic to see the pupils’ engaging with it. The whole day has reinforced why Mary’s Meals is such an important charity for us to partner with and the huge difference they are making to help children around the world receive an education.”

Showcasing the flavourful world of rice, the pupils cooked up Jollof Rice with Chicken from this year’s Tilda Together recipe book, using Brown & White.

Leading the cookery lesson, dietitian & nutritionist Lucy Upton added: “I don’t think I can stress just how important it is to teach from a young age about eating healthily and Tilda Together has been a fantastic opportunity to do this. Rice is a staple ingredient around the world and Tilda’s Brown & White offers a mix that kids enjoy eating, whilst providing additional nutrients they need including fibre, vitamins and minerals. Another great part of the day was Mary’s Meals, they are a charity that is really close to my heart, and share the ethos of nutrition being essential within education settings.”

Since July 2018, Tilda Foodservice’s charitable partnership with Mary’s Meals has seen 101,000 meals donated to the school-feeding charity when caterers purchase Tilda Brown & White, Tilda Wholegrain Brown Rice and Tilda Brown Basmati.

Richard Lloyd, community ambassador at Mary’s Meals added; “Thank you to Tilda for this fantastic opportunity to inspire so many young people and share with them Mary’s Meals vision for feeding school children all around the world. We now provide a staggering 1.5 million school meals every day. Tilda’s support is so important because we always want to reach the next hungry child whose life can be changed by Mary’s Meals. Alongside learning about our schools’ meals initiative, it’s also been great to have the pupils involved in packing backpacks, these are going to be very well-received!”