Peas Please Accreditation
In March 2020, we joined the Food Foundation’s Peas Please initiative to encourage more children to eat vegetables by redesigning our menus, by helping shape the national schools’ strategy and providing resources from our Food to Flourish Classroom to support the VegPower campaign.
In December 2023, The Food Foundation awarded Education Catering their 'green traffic light' for achieving all its pledges. Peas Please is part of The Food Foundation, a national organisation committed to increasing the amount and variety of vegetables in children’s diets.
Councillor Steve Forster, Hampshire County Council’s Executive Member for Education, said: “I am delighted that Education Catering has been recognised for completing their pledge to support more children to eat vegetables. Children who develop a taste for vegetables are more likely to eat them as adults, so it’s vital we give our pupils a healthy start in life to set them on a path where making healthy choices is the norm.
“It’s extra impressive that Education Catering has earned this award because they are the only local authority caterer to do so, which has been achieved despite the ongoing challenges posed by the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis.”
As part of their commitment to children’s health and wellbeing Education Catering promised to:
- revitalise the school lunch menu with a wider variety of vegetables and ensure there are two portions of vegetables in every meal,
- promote the fresh, seasonal vegetables in school meals to pupils, families and schools to make them aware of the quality of ingredients and produce that their children can eat at school, and the health benefits that nutritious vegetables can bring, and
- encourage healthy eating at home by making it easy for parents and guardians to find easy-to-cook, affordable veg-based recipes on the Education Catering recipe bank online.
