The School Food Revolution: celebrating sustainability for International School Meals Day
This year marks the 10th anniversary of International School Meals Day, a campaign to raise awareness of the importance of nutritious school food for children all over the world. This year, the campaign will focus on celebrating school meals, reflecting on the past, present and future of school food. In the midst of a global climate crisis, it’s essential that we consider the future impact of our food choices on the environment, as well as its impact on our children’s health.
ProVeg UK’s School Plates programme does exactly that - making school food more sustainable by swapping carbon-intensive meals with nutritious meat-free and plant-based alternatives. ProVeg UK’s Jimmy Pierson discusses the plant-based school food revolution in his guest blog to celebrate International School Meals Day.
There’s a quiet revolution going on in UK schools. Shhhh. School meals are changing! Council by council, school by school, menus are becoming increasingly plant-based and much of it has gone under the radar. Until now.
I’m sure most of us remember our school dinners, from rubbery sausages to Turkey Twizzlers, maybe even Spam fritters? Back then, school food was far from vegan-friendly, and despite the best efforts of Jamie Oliver in the mid-2000s to make school meals healthier, not much really changed.
Changing School Food for the Better
The baton to bring change in school food was picked up by ProVeg UK (a non-profit food awareness organisation) in 2018 and we’ve been driving the revolution ever since. While the media continues to focus on free school meals and the wonderful work done by Marcus Rashford, we’ve been focusing on changing the food itself.
Through our School Plates programme, we’ve made school food healthier and more sustainable by helping local authorities to include more plant-based meals on school menus. Since School Plates launched, we’ve turned at least 4.6 million meals to meat-free or plant-based!
We’re delighted to report that menu change in UK schools is accelerating faster than ever. In the last six months, our programme has doubled in size. We’re now working with 25 major school caterers, including 20 local authorities. We review menus, suggest language and positioning changes to increase the uptake of existing veggie meals, and develop new recipes - all free of charge! We also deliver plant-based cooking workshops in schools, but more on this later.
Local Authorities Leading the Way
We never cease to be amazed by how willing and open our partners are to change. For example, one local authority we work with has recently launched a range of new plant-based options across all of its 200 schools, and also started blending its minced beef dishes 50% with lentils.
Another catering partner of ours has just introduced two new meat-free days per week in 55 schools. That’s up from just one meat-free day every three weeks - a six-fold increase!
We’ve helped another council to introduce a new plant-based option every day across its 59 primary schools, and reduce the meat content of its beef burgers by 50% (replaced by broccoli!). And we’ve supported another council managing 51 primary schools to rename its weekly meat-free day as ‘Save The Planet Day’ to help children make the connection between the food they eat and its impact on the environment.
Impact
Our 25 partners provide catering for over 2,500 schools in England and Wales. This means that their menus, which are reviewed and edited by us, now go to over 350,000 children every single day.
How many million meals could we change in the future? Well, if all our 25 partners introduce just one new meat-free day each week, then this would lead to 15.6 million more meals turning meat-free or plant-based. And if we reach 50 partners by the end of this year, and the 25 new partners all introduce a new meat-free day, our cumulative impact by the end of 2023 would be 46.8 million meals turning meat-free or plant-based. These are big numbers, but we have big ambitions and want to go even further!
Why do we do this?
Everyone at ProVeg cares deeply about animals, but the main driver for our partners is the environment and climate change. Over 320 local authorities in the UK (almost 80%) have now declared a climate emergency, and are increasingly persuaded to embrace plant-based food for the planet.
They have seen that the Climate Change Committee recommends a 20% shift away from all meat and dairy by 2030 (rising to 35% by 2050) to put the UK on the path to net-zero. They are also influenced by the National Food Strategy, on which ProVeg UK was officially consulted, which recommends the nation eats 30% less meat, 20% more fruit and vegetables, and 50% more fibre by 2032.
Restrictive Government guidance
You may already be familiar with the Government recommendations about what food should be served in schools and how often. They contain some helpful guidance but mostly restrict our progress. In England, the School Food Standards require schools to serve meat at least three times per week and dairy every day.
We’re doing all we can to influence and update these standards to reflect the health and climate impact of our food, which is why we recently joined the Department for Education’s Sustainability and Climate Change Working Group. Improving national food policy is central to our work, and we’re delighted to be advising this governmental department on this important issue.
Plant-based cooking workshops in schools
The lifting of Covid-related restrictions has allowed us to once again deliver our plant-based cooking workshops in schools. We recently held our first workshop since the pandemic began with Salford City Council, where we demonstrated to eight of its school cook supervisors and catering managers how to prepare several of our new plant-based recipes. The workshops are integral to our success, giving school chefs the tools to cook healthier, tastier plant-based food that children will love.
Green School Menu League
We’ve also just launched a new campaign with Meatless Farm and vegan chef and CBBC star Omari McQueen to further the school food revolution. Our Green School Menu League is a nationwide competition challenging schools to make their menus more eco-friendly by promoting more meat-free and plant-based meals. So many of our partners are already doing incredible work to encourage the uptake of plant-based meals, so we can’t wait to see what other schools are doing too! Make sure to follow us on social media to stay updated, as we’ll be announcing a winner in the coming weeks.
How can you help?
There are lots of ways to support our work to make school food more plant-based - for children, animals, and our planet.
Do you know anyone responsible for school food provision? If so, then please get in touch by emailing schools@proveg.com.
Sign up for our newsletter to keep up-to-date with our news and successes.
Best of all, you can donate to School Plates now via our website. As a non-profit organisation providing free services, we rely wholly on your generosity to run our pioneering School Plates programme.
Your gift has never been as effective. If we achieve our aims this year, it will cost us less than 20p to turn a school meal meat-free or plant-based!
Jimmy Pierson is Director of ProVeg UK, helping schools and local authorities to become more sustainable, healthier and save money.
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