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A nursery in Scotland is ditching meat to celebrate National Vegetarian Week.
The Murrayfield Nursery is located in Edinburgh. It already serves a selection of vegetarian and vegan options as part of its seasonal menu.
Nursery ditches meat
However, from May 10-15 – it will offer an exclusively meat-free menu – which it describes as ‘healthy’ and ‘nutritious’.
Rhonda Houston is the nursery’s Manager. She told Edinburgh Live: “We’re always promoting the benefits of a healthy, balanced diet, and sharing information about where our food comes from. This was another fun opportunity in which to do so…
“It will be nice to introduce all of our children to new tastes, textures, and flavors, which we can all share together.”
National Vegetarian Week
On social media, the nursery said the veggie menu was ‘going down a storm’ with pupils.
It added: “It’s National Vegetarian Week and we’re supporting this in Nursery by sparking our children’s curiosity by including a range of fresh fruit and veg as part of our daily provocations.
“We’ve certainly had some interesting comments so far!”
Plant-based milk scheme
Earlier this year, Scotland agreed to include plant-based alternatives to its government-funded nursery milk scheme.
The move follows years of campaigning from The Vegan Society. It launched the Play Fair with Plant Milk initiative in 2019 to tackle ‘the inequality surrounding the favoring of animal milk’.
The Nursery Milk Scheme reimburses eligible childcare providers the cost of providing milk to children under five.
Sabrina Ahmed is the Campaigns and Policy Officer at The Vegan Society. She said: “We’re often contacted by parents of children describing the indirect discrimination they’ve faced due to the existing UK Nursery Milk Scheme.
“Many children have lost out on this free health benefit because of their ethical beliefs, which is unfair.”
“We’re delighted to see that the Scottish Government has now recognized this negative impact. The new Scottish Milk and Healthy Snack Scheme is inclusive of those who cannot consume animal milk because of medical, religious, or other beliefs.
“This sets a great precedent for other public health schemes to follow suit.”
