Self-confessed meat lover Jimmy Pierson’s dream job since childhood was to write about football. In 2014, he achieved that, reporting for a national newspaper on the World Cup, hosted that year by Brazil.
But his life turned around dramatically when a friend asked him for support on a week as a vegetarian. It was during that week that Jimmy researched the dairy industry and his life was never to be the same again.
Today, Jimmy runs the non-profit organisation ProVeg UK, whose School Plates programme introduces more plant-based meals into school canteens. It has had enormous success and can now claim to have helped provide more than four million meat-free or plant-based meals to children since its inception in 2018.
Looking back, it seems unlikely that Jimmy would have been the driving force behind such a programme.
“I was completely disinterested in animals to be honest, never had a pet growing up and had little time for cats and dogs. I ate meat as often as I possibly could. I used to order steak and ale pie every time I went for a pub meal. I didn’t even look at the menu,” Jimmy reveals.
As a teenager, he happily worked at fast food chain KFC, taking home the leftovers to eat throughout the week.
“If someone told me when I was younger that I would be a vegan, I would have laughed at them.”
Jimmy Pierson
Life changed for Jimmy seven years ago when his friend asked for support to go vegetarian for a week.
“During the course of that week, I started reading about the dairy industry. When I learnt what went on, I very quickly became vegan. It was a “flick-of-a-switch” moment when I realised the injustice of it all, in particular the separation of the calves from the mothers.”
His epiphany had immediate consequences.
“I was writing about football every day, going to big games and interviewing players and managers. It was my dream job from childhood. But learning about the treatment of animals completely changed my life. I had to quit the job to work for The Vegan Society, and do something about this.”
Surprisingly, transition to a vegan life was easy for meat-loving Jimmy. “I don’t miss any of the food now – not even steak and ale pie.”
Then, when Jimmy became a parent, he was resolved to bring up his daughter as vegan. Contrary to expectations, Jimmy and his partner received strong support from medical professionals for their decision.
However, school meals proved to be a serious let-down.
“In school, my daughter is lucky enough to get a vegan meal every day. But it’s not good. She comes home hungry, usually complaining about her lunch. And she’s one of the lucky ones.”
When Jimmy left The Vegan Society to start ProVeg UK, part of the global food awareness organisation ProVeg International, he realised that no other NGOs in the UK were working to make school food more plant-based.
“We all remember what food was like at school – whether you had rubbery sausages or Turkey Twizzlers, it wasn’t good! Jamie Oliver pushed to improve things a while back. But nothing seemed to have really changed from that. The baton had been dropped.”
School Plates came out of that realisation. Jimmy launched the programme for ProVeg UK in 2018 to make school food healthier and more sustainable by increasing the quantity and quality of plant-based food in schools.
As a starting point, he set about reviewing every primary school menu in the UK.
“It was shocking how bad some of them were. Wales and the North West were some of the worst. The more affluent areas down South were generally better. But I knew then that we had to change this fast because, for some kids, the school meal is their only proper, hot meal of the day.”
Processed meat was still prominent despite the ground-breaking 2015 WHO paper that declared processed meat as carcinogenic and a cause of cancer in the same category as tobacco.
“We are still trying to get it off menus, it’s a work in progress. But the main priority is nudging more children to choose the existing meat-free or plant-based meals using creative naming and positioning changes – all based on research – and adding more meat-free days. Local councils can only do so much with the limited budgets they have.”
Jimmy estimates that local councils have only around 75p per person to spend on each primary school meal.
“It’s less than a quid. But think about how important that meal is for the children. It’s crucial for their development – physically, mentally, and emotionally.”
The plant-based meals that Jimmy introduces are healthier, more sustainable, and also cheaper, coming in at 41p per primary school meal on average.
Four years since its launch and School Plates is a roaring success. In the last six months alone, the project has doubled in size. At least 4.6 million school meals have been turned meat-free or plant-based since School Plates started, largely through the introduction of meat-free days at schools.
Jimmy’s team comes in and provides menu consultation and recipe development – all free of charge – and also offers plant-based cooking in schools workshops to make the provision of plant-based meals a pleasure rather than a chore, having designed 35 new recipes specifically for primary schools.
Jimmy’s mission is to see at least half of UK councils working with the School Plates programme in the next five years and he hopes to begin work with the UK’s hospitals as well.
He also plans to target government policy on school food. The School Food Standards, currently under a review that will be completed in 2025, requires that meat is served at least three days each week and dairy every day.
“Lots of schools want to serve healthier and more sustainable plant-based meals but they can’t. So it’s crucial that these restrictions are lifted, and we’re now working with the Department for Education to achieve that.”
