Let’s see Meat Free Mondays in all our schools
If children eat a vegetarian meal one day a week, there should be money left over for better school dinners, writes Jane Bradley
As schools in Edinburgh launched ‘meat-free Mondays’, photographs were released of beaming children at the city’s Royal High Primary sitting around the lunch table.
“It was thumbs-up all round for Royal High Primary’s first @Meatfreemonday,” the city council trumpeted. “Pupils tucked into veggie curry and Quorn hotdogs.”
As a parent of a child who eats (some) school meals at an Edinburgh council-run school, the new initiative – which will see only vegetarian food provided every Monday throughout the local authority’s primary schools – came as something of a surprise. Not an unpleasant one, I have to say, I’m quite happy with a day – or more – of vegetarian food. It ticks the boxes in terms of reducing the amount of processed meat the children are eating, as well as tapping into growing environmental concerns surrounding meat consumption. It is a great initiative and will, no doubt, be followed by other council areas. Council officials will be equally delighted, I would expect, considering that a meal free of meat or fish is likely to be substantially cheaper than the “chicken dinner” (whether it will be a winner with my daughter still remains to be seen) on offer later in the week or the “Scottish beef pasta bolognese” on the menu next Thursday.
I hope that with this in mind, the powers-that-be are going to use the extra cash to upgrade the quality of the food they provide for our children. Anecdotally, many youngsters currently claim that foods they would relish at home are all but inedible at school. Of course, meals created in bulk are never going to rival mummy or daddy’s home cooking and we cannot expect them to. But an investigation I published in Scotland on Sunday a few years ago found that while Scottish school lunches largely meet Scottish Government requirements relating to salt, fat and sugar intake, there is actually not enough of the good stuff – low-fat protein or fresh, vitamin-packed vegetables. Meanwhile,