What a year we’ve had here at ProVeg UK! 2021 has certainly been our most successful year to date, and thanks to your support, we’ve made a huge impact…

Plant-based School Food

A huge part of what we do here at ProVeg UK centres on improving school food. We can all remember eating some pretty grizzly school dinners back in the day, so we want to make sure that our children don’t look back on school food with the same contempt. And in a time where our planet is threatened by animal agriculture and carbon emissions, we believe that including more plant-based meals in UK schools will help protect our childrens’ future. Plus, they’re also delicious and packed with nutrients!

Our School Plates programme is revolutionising food in UK schools. The programme provides school caterers and local authorities with the resources they need to create tasty school meals without compromising on nutrition or putting the planet at risk. In 2021, School Plates doubled in size, and we are now responsible for switching at least 4.6 million school meals to meat-free or plant-based!

At the start of 2020, we were working with just eight school caterers. We’re delighted to report that we are now collaborating with 25 major catering partners, covering over 2,500 schools feeding almost 350,000 children every day. 

We also relaunched our plant-based school chef training sessions, holding our first workshop since the pandemic began at the beginning of last year. Our Plant-based Cooking in Schools workshops are integral to our success, providing school cooks with the tools they need to cook tasty, plant-based food that children will love. 

And if you’d like to try some of our delicious School Plates recipes at home, our recipe book, The Recipes, is now available to download for free!

Influencing National Food Policy

It’s not just school food we’re revolutionising, we’re also taking big steps to change national food policy. Earlier this year, we were officially consulted on the groundbreaking National Food Strategy, which calls for the UK to eat 30% less meat by 2032. 

We also co-founded the Plant-based Food Alliance UK with other industry-leading organisations to help make the UK a global leader in plant-based food and drink. The Alliance currently consists of ourselves, Oatly, Alpro, The Vegan Society and Upfield, with members set to increase over the course of 2022 as we work together to improve national food systems. 

The Power of ProVeggies

Thanks to your incredible support, we’ve swapped millions of UK school meals to delicious, healthy plant-based alternatives this year – a victory worth celebrating. And if all our 25 catering partners introduced just one new meat-free day per week, that would lead to roughly 15.5 million meals going meat-free or plant-based every year!

Change is happening, and we are working hard to revolutionise food for people and the planet alike. If you’d like to join our movement and help us improve School Meals and national food policy, you can support us here. To keep updated with the latest ProVeg UK news and successes, please sign up to our newsletter. 

Thank you for making 2021 a year to remember.

Jimmy & the ProVeg UK team