Health & wellbeing: Tips on offering meat-free meals in your early years setting

The consumption and production of meat is a substantial contributor to climate change, responsible for about a third of the UK’s diet-related CO2 emissions. A report in 2021 said people must eat 30 per cent less meat by 2030 to reduce the environmental impact of food production, as the carbon footprint of meat is very high.

Adults in the UK are reducing their meat intake, as measured by the National Diet and Nutrition Survey; down 17 per cent in 2019 compared to 2008. If parents are interested in consuming less meat, shouldn’t settings also be? Could you reduce the meat you serve by perhaps 30 per cent?

Tips to reduce meat in the nursery:

• Swap in beans, chickpeas and lentils for minced beef and lamb recipes, or perhaps go half and half to start with. These offer plenty of protein, and are cheaper.
• Don’t serve beef at all – venison is leaner, and some say tastier (so you need less), and wild deer haven’t consumed hormones or antibiotics.
• Don’t serve pork at all, which is particularly helpful if you have children from Muslim or Jewish families. Use cauliflower, mushrooms and aubergines instead.
• Include peppers and citrus fruits, as the vitamin C helps iron absorption. Iron in plant foods is less easily absorbed by the body than the iron in meat.

If you stop serving meat, you need to consider fortified food (nutritional yeasts and fortified breakfast cereals) to meet children’s B12 needs, and perhaps keep serving cheese and eggs. If there is no fish, consider adding omega fatty acids (from chia seeds, flaxseeds) to support children’s brain development.

What we learnt

At Tops Day Nurseries we tried having a meat-free Monday about 15 years ago, and it didn’t go down well; a few parents wanted to swap their children onto a meat menu day. But many parents are now more informed and care about their child’s future. Now we offer meat-free dishes every day, and when we do serve meat (venison or free-range chicken), we source it responsibly and also ‘dilute’ it with vegetables.

It’s not for us to judge parents’ wishes for their children’s diets, but we can try to lead by example. The more settings replace some meat with vegetables and push for schools to do the same, the more we protect our children’s future, and help deliver on our Government’s commitment to the Rights of the Child and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

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