The rise of more plant-based eating

In my work with schools, I advise them on all aspects of sustainability, along with my fellow climate action advisors at Let’s Go Zero. That includes food, and the most important aspect of that is meat and dairy. Local and seasonal food only gets you so far. The carbon intensity of meat and dairy is so outsized that you won’t really make a significant difference to your school food until you start reducing meat consumption.

We don’t advise attempting to take the whole school vegetarian or vegan, and there are government nutrition standards that would prevent that anyway. What we suggest is reducing meat across the whole menu, and raising the profile of the vegetarian options so that they don’t feel second best. We have a partner organisation called Proveg that specialises in sustainable school food, and we get schools working with them to get bespoke solutions for their caterer.

Proveg are part of a new wave of organisations aiming for more plant based eating. In the past, campaigns against meat eating tended to persuade people to stop eating meat altogether, led by groups like the Vegan Society or Viva. While these organisations have a place, they are unlikely to convince a majority and so their impact is limited. Taking a different approach, Proveg has a stated ambition to “replace 50% of animal products, globally, with plant-based and cultivated foods by 2040.” They focus on the food rather than the people, on choices rather than lifestyle diets. As the name suggests, being ‘pro veg’ rather than anti meat is less antagonistic and opens up conversation.

In a school, you are unlikely to convince more than a handful of people to order the vegetarian lasagne. Catering managers often tell me it’s a single-figure take-up on the vegetarian option, usually children from families that eat vegetarian or vegan. If you change the recipe for the lasagne and add lentils and grated mushrooms to the mince beef mix, you can halve the amount of meat served that day in the canteen.

Something similar is going on with Halfway Heroes. The campaign encourages people to make half their meals vegan over the course of a week, helping them to “take action in a way that’s enjoyable, achievable and impactful.” They provide recipes and swap suggestions and invite people to consider a vegetarian diet, but it’s a much more flexible approach. It empowers people to take steps towards reducing meat, rather than an all or nothing decision.

Halfway Heroes also work with restaurants, and awards them bronze, silver or gold for their plant-based offer. In order to get gold, half of a restaurant’s menu has to be plant based. The chain that comes nearest to that is Wagamama at 44%, and it has a target to reach 50%. So does Ikea, so these are approaches that are working for mainstream food outlets.

Other campaigns I’ve written about before include the NHS’s hybrid sausages, or the Meat me Halfway campaign. There is a definite shift in advocacy around meat, from giving it up to reducing our consumption. This does not resolve the moral question of animal suffering, which is what animates many of those who choose not to eat meat. But to ease pressure on land use and reduce emissions, more plant-based might be a message that people will respond to.