Documenting the Small Grants Programmes

In north, central and southern England exciting projects began in summer 2022 which promoted vegetables to children in creative, but simple and fun ways. Altogether over 500 children and their families benefited! Some common themes emerged from across these activities: 

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• Making veg fun: children were encouraged to try vegetables through growing, games and activities. 

• Simplicity: conscious of the financial and time pressure on families, these activities promoted veg recipes that required only basic equipment, cheap ingredients, and quick methods.  

• Rewards: these projects used stickers and prizes, e.g. from Veg Power, and simple verbal praise to reward children for their efforts, helping to build their self-confidence.  

• Child-led: these activities involved children at their heart, harnessing their imagination and creativity, instilling ownership over their food choices and normalising veg.  

These activities were not just about getting children to eat more veg; they also encouraged whole families to cook and eat vegetables either directly - via family workshops  -  or indirectly, through activities beginning in schools, which inspired other family members to cook and eat more veg. 

Growing veg at school environment: a case study from London 

In Southwark, London, Christina Nilsen Wheatley founder of Edible Rotherhithe designed and delivered field-to-fork, creative and educational activities to show children how vegetables grow and encourage them to try new foods. Based in a polytunnel in the school’s playground, Christina helped children plant, water, harvest and shell vegetables, follow recipes and eat veg. 

These workshops demonstrated ways of eating veg that were cost-effective and minimised the need for cooking. For example, children received salad kits to prepare at home with their families, which were very positively received as they provided free ingredients, simple recipe cards and did not require any expensive kitchen gadgets to prepare, or much cooking, reducing fuel costs. 

By taking children through the journey of seed to plant, this activity connected children to where food comes from and gave them time to become familiar and interested in the vegetables grown in the school garden. Most of the pupils live in densely urban area of Southwark, which scores very high on deprivation indices. The environment of the polytunnel expanded the way many pupils were exposed to veg, which was predominantly from supermarkets, or as a frozen product.  

‘’The salad bags were lots of fun. It was great to do it together as a family [this is] something we could not normally afford to [do].’’ (Parent of a child who attended Christina’s project) 

After repeated positive exposure through growing and other activities based around vegetables, Christina reports that children’s knowledge and interest increased, so that they actively ask for more veg during the school lunch. Moreover, parents requested more recipes, for low-cost, easy warm meals, so Christina has been developing slow-cooker recipes. Veg grown in the polytunnel that was leftover was given to the school canteen to include in school meals. 

Another success was that the Year 1 teacher, inspired by Christina’s ideas, incorporated the topic of vegetables into the curriculum. Plastic food toys were replaced with real vegetables and fruit, giving the children an opportunity to interact and familiarise with real food.   

The “Fruit and Vegetables Faraday Champions” activity was not only attended by an impressive 164 Year 6 pupils, but it also secured external funding, so it can be continued as there is already a waiting list of interested pupils. 

‘’I cannot wait for the funding to come to continue the after-school club and Eat Them to Defeat Them as it had such an impact and was positively received.’’ (Christina, Veg Advocate from London) 

Promoting veg as a school holiday activity: a case study from Hull 

The Summer Eating Challenge developed by Darren Squires and Anna Route from the Hull Food Partnership, tasked children over the summer break to become Veg Champions. More than 300 primary-school pupils accomplished the challenge over the six-week holidays by eating vegetables and describing their veg adventures in an accompanying booklet, which was awarded with a certificate and an apron.  

The idea of challenging and rewarding pupils to eat veg was inspired by the Summer Reading Challenge and #EatThemToDefeatThem campaigns. The workbook features recipe ideas and tips, inspiring pupils to try and respond to the vegetables in a choice of ways e.g. with a recipe, or drawing. The positive language chosen “Super Six Veg”, ”Champion” and “Veg Adventures” made veg exciting while removing the pressure to eat.  

Alongside the workbook, Darren posted demonstration videos of recipes featuring vegetables from the workbook, encouraging the whole family to experiment with flavourings and discuss the taste, textures and flavour of those veg.   

The project was such a success that all six schools are going to run the challenge again in summer 2023 with some minor improvements to the communication to ensure even greater success in helping children and their families eat more vegetables.  

"What a lovely idea, great way to get the children to try new foods" (Staff member at one of the schools) 

Veg art and storytelling in a community centre: a case study from Hastings 

Chef Isabelle Endreo, founder of the Rainbow Kitchen Magic used the Veg Advocate micro-grant to combine veg and art in a practical, reflective and creative workshop for families with children aged 4-11 years from the Clifton Community Centre in Hastings.  

Isabelle’s event began with creating easy snacks with children such as sandwiches, wraps, salads, and even 10-minute mug cakes featuring colourful seasonal vegetables where children were allocated roles and had to follow the recipes from the booklet.  

The simplicity, adaptability and colourful presentation of the recipes ensured that children and parents were willing to continue making them again at home. The safe cooking and simple preparation methods allowed children to lead those activities. Families explored ways of including veg they disliked such as grating carrots or courgettes into chocolate or lemon cakes. 

Finally, the pinch of art boosted creativity by not only telling stories about the vegetable heroes, but also through children combining their own food-creations, as they children created veg-puppets and told stories about them. A day full of fun turned everyday cooking into an enjoyable and memorable family-focused experience. 

“The event had positive feedback from a number of people from the Clifton centre, who thought it was a high quality event and would be more than happy to do this again, parents and children said they definitely would like to do this again”  (Isabelle, Veg Advocate) 

Making it easy to eat veg: working with schools and community centres 

The Summer Eating Challenge, Faraday Fruit and Vegetable Champions and Art Snack Attack provide excellent practical tools of creating a culture of healthy eating within schools and community centres – environments already accessed by children and families. These activities can be seen as one part of the “whole school approach” to food – where eating well is integrated across different aspects of school life, (see here from The Food Foundation and in the National Food Strategy: The Plan p.205, for more on the case for a whole-school approach). 

Nonetheless, without the determination and dedication of the Veg Advocates, and the willing collaboration of their local schools and community centres, these activities could not have taken place. Nor were they free from challenges: Darren and Anna in Hull reflected on how they needed to simplify messaging and focus on either cooking or growing veg, so that schools could in turn promote the project to parents easily. Isabelle’s workshop was so packed with activities that she felt, given the time and funding, she could have run a series of workshops, that would also allow time for consistent messaging and to reach more families.  

Making sure schools and community settings where families and children learn, socialise and eat have the right resources and incentives is needed to ensure activities like these are not just one-off interventions. Why? These activities empower school children and contribute to a virtuous veg cycle, where veg is plentiful as it is desired, enjoyed and normalised, improving diet quality through reshaping access to veg, and ultimately benefitting both human and planetary health.  

About the author: Magdalena, a registered nutritionist (ANutr) and nutrition educator from Liverpool. She has been a Veg Advocate.

These case studies provide insight into the use of educational resources to promote the increased consumption of vegetables. Through non-judgemental influences and positive encouragement in community contexts, they aimed to build confidence to cook and try new veg, often through sensory education, encouraging behaviour change by giving people the opportunity to taste and experiment new veg.  

Each of the Veg Advocates below also drew on their own strengths and networks – as farmers, local food entrepreneurs, or trusted members of a community. They used tailored methods to ensure veg was appealing and accessible, such as marketing veg through recipe cards and promotional flyers, offering free cooking videos or lessons, and free meal kits.  

Connecting to farmers: a case study from Preston  

 
Three Veg Advocates designed and developed dishes using seasonal ingredients from local farmers to be served in The Larder Café in Preston. 

Along with the dish, customers could take home a flyer containing information about who grew the vegetable, what benefits this vegetable can offer, and a delicious recipe of how to cook with it.  

One of the Veg Advocates, motivated by her own experiences growing up on a farm, was driven by the belief that ‘there are several projects which aim to connect children to farmers and farming, but there is very little in place for adults to do the same.’  

This activity aimed to make local veg appealing; by serving the produce on the menu at The Larder Café, people had the opportunity to taste it first as well as learning more about the vegetable. The locally grown produce was also available to buy at a nearby market. 

Each of the designed dishes were well received at the cafe, with around 40 customers per month wanting to know more and taking home a flyer. The funding allowed the project to run for 4 months showcasing a seasonal vegetable each month - engaging farmers, staff at a community café, and the local people in tasting and buying local produce grown in and around Preston. 

 Free and Accessible veg: a case study from Lincoln  

In Lincoln, Veg Advocate Gemma Whitelock shared her knowledge about how to incorporate veg to make affordable meals. Through engaging with a community hub in the city centre, Gemma used the venue as a place to hold drop-in interactive talks with a wide range of the community.  

Addressing the barriers to veg of availability, accessibility and affordability, the Eat More Good Stuff activity offered 60 veg-filled meal kits for free. The take-away meal kit provided an opportunity for those who had engaged with the talk to apply learning from the demonstration in their own kitchen by cooking a meal for 4 people.   

This activity provided a space for conversations, free resources and an opportunity for trying a new approach to diet.  Conversations revealed that people often had a set way of shopping, preparing and cooking their meals. The offer of a whole meal kit for free removed the price barrier of veg: people could take a risk and try something new without being worried about wasting money.  

 Recognising barriers to cooking: a case study from Birmingham 

ChangeKitchen CIC designs bespoke cooking courses for community groups. By starting with what they like, Birgit Kehrer demystifies vegetables, with participants learning to trust their palate by providing empowering food messages.  

Purchasing portable equipment with the Veg Advocate grant fund meant that Birgit could offer courses in the places that were free, familiar and easily accessible to different groups e.g. refugees, care leavers, people experiencing homelessness in hostels. By recognising the barriers that exist to engage in these types of learning opportunities - including being located in areas where there is a lack of fresh fruit or veg in the local shops - Birgit went directly to them. 

Birgit has developed new methods of delivering food education. Last year, around 40 people took part in Birgit’s remote cooking sessions. Birgit’s sessions focussed on positive encouragement – offering participants the opportunity to enjoy veg, rather than feel they are being told what to eat.  Birgit also avoided a set curriculum on what was cooked, so that people could share recipes and cultural cuisines.  

Birgit identifies that being involved and active with Veg Advocates across the UK has been invaluable. She has received funding to purchase thermal cooking bags to continue working with communities facing food and fuel poverty. 

Community food education - a piece of the puzzle 

These Veg Advocate activities reflect how much innovation and determination there is at a local level to help increase veg consumption. They shared knowledge locally and demonstrated the strength of working with local assets such as community cafes/hubs and self-help groups.  

However, to realise the full potential of community-based food education, these activities need consistent resourcing e.g. in the form of a “Community Eatwell” programme suggested in the National Food Strategy.   

“It’s quite niche and different – and very time heavy so would need to be predominantly staff costs which are often not easy to fund.” One Veg Advocate, on the challenge of implementing their Small Grant Activity.  

And community food education is only one piece of the puzzle: “Numerous studies have shown that most people already know what a healthy diet looks like… The problem is not information, but implementation.” (National Food Strategy The Plan pg.47)The pressure on an individual to make ‘good choices’ with their daily eating habits is made yet harder given the rising cost of living, while both production and consumption of fruit and vegetables in the UK are increasingly under pressure. Still more needs to be done across the UK to design a food environment in which it is easy and attractive for people to choose to eat more vegetables, and to address the financial and practical barriers that may prevent them ( see further SHEFs Policy Briefing 4).  

About the author: SB Cooper is a Veg Advocate and organiser for Queer Food Project, a Manchester based mutual aid food project to explore opportunities to connect as a queer community in the kitchen and around the table.  

@queerfoodproject (IG) https://queerfoodproject.wixsite.com/home-1/featured-project  

A key theme in many of the Small Grant Programme activities was communal meals. Many of the Veg Advocates must have felt that bringing people together with food was a good way of communicating the message we wanted to share, which was getting people to eat more veg!  

Creating open spaces to enjoy veg together: case studies from Birmingham and London  

Nina Hayr, a Veg Advocate based in Birmingham, brought together over 40 people of all ages, from 5 to 95 years old, with her veg inspired Jubilee community lunch. Nina and her neighbours got together in the street to share food and knowledge. Different methods of cooking were used to cook vegetables and dishes from around the world. They discussed how vegetables, herbs and spices grow, their health benefits and how to use leftovers so they’re not wasted.  

Fun games and activities were provided for the children to help them to be interested in veg. The neighbours took part in activities such as planting seeds and taking cuttings. There were also discussions which helped them learn to cook more dishes and their benefits to health.  

“The day was absolutely amazing!  I really enjoyed the positive company of people young and old mixing interacting and enjoying the day.... One thing I loved the most was that children could take the seeds in their flower pots home and see how they grow them each day until either a flower or vegetable had emerged from the little seed they planted on the day of the queens Jubilee celebration street party day.” Eleven year old boy who attended Nina’s community lunch.  

Having a reason for people to come together will naturally start conversations. By adding healthy food, we are guided by the people around us to try new things that we may not have done before.  

Eating together means messages can be shared in a non-stigmatising way by making veg the easy choice for people to want to eat. Having communal spaces set up where people can attend on their own, with friends, or as part of a group would be a great way to improve the health and wellbeing of local communities and combat loneliness by sharing healthy food and company.  

Another community meal activity saw Anne, a Veg Advocate based in South London, work with a group of volunteers to cook a meal once a month for their community. The meal takes place in a local Church, which kindly offers the kitchen space for free. The meal was open to all and attended by a diverse community of older neighbours, food bank members, church members and Anne’s friends and family.  

Bean stews and meals full of veg were introduced to encourage the community to meet, socialise and try vegetables they might never have tried before - for example, celeriac soup!  

Anne used the micro-grant to buy kitchen equipment and ingredients, and then started a “pay as you like” system.  However, Anne acknowledged the kitchen wasn’t regularly used for cooking meals which meant extra equipment had to be bought or loaned, to make the activity easier for the volunteers.  

As the project has grown, Anne has also started to pay a chef to cook for the group, acknowledging the importance of recognising the time and skill it takes to provide healthy meals. While this has increased the running cost of the activity, it has reduced the stress on volunteers and is bringing more visitors.  

Commitment and consistency: a case study from Manchester 

The Queer Food Project is a mutual aid food sharing pilot project that tests out how to build local networks and communities through sharing food in Manchester.  

SB applied for the micro-grant funding to organise the first in-person pilot by Queer Food Project since the project formed to connect queer people through sharing food during COVID-19 lockdowns. The simple aim for a group of cooks to come together and share skills for 4 weeks in a kitchen that can be hired by community organisations in Manchester.  The meals were driven to a local queer community group, encouraging people to meet each other and share nutritious veg packed meals.  

Each week the group came together to cook seasonal veg and share skills in the kitchen as a way of connecting through food. By the fourth week, they had the highest turn out, which gave the impression that even though a slow starter, the project was needed and considered important to members of the community.  

Not having an appropriate venue or resources can mean this type of event cannot happen without commitment and consistent funding. SB found that not having a dedicated space for the activity meant they needed more equipment. More time was needed to get to know the new kitchen and to work out how to use the equipment. They were also restricted by trying to fit in cooking and a social gathering into an allocated time slot by the venue and volunteers’ limited time.  

Nonetheless, meeting in person in this relaxed environment with good food gave the group ideas for other projects that wouldn’t have happened without this activity. In December they held a Queer Mass Dinner with the lead cooks and 4 of the people who had eaten the meals in November shared the responsibility of preparing and cooking a huge feast on Christmas Day Over 25 people came to eat in person and the group delivered two meals to a couple who said they’d never had a Christmas dinner cooked for them.  

“I believe that cooking and eating together is good for physical and mental health, especially when in a safe space.” SB Cooper, Veg Advocate based in Manchester  

The wider benefits of eating together: case study from Seaford 

My own activity was a monthly community lunch to run alongside our Repair Cafe. Anyone from the local community can come along to learn how to fix their items and have lunch while they wait. Alongside the veg filled hot meal, bread and vegan cake, we have bowls of fruit, cut up veg sticks and houmous on the tables for people to share. We also put a selection of food books, games and activities out for people to do or to act as conversation starters.  

We’ve found this project has brought many people together who wouldn’t have met otherwise. Lots of people want to offer their time and skills to get involved which has enabled us to run toy swaps before Christmas and skill sharing workshops. We now have volunteers who come along to show people how to learn to knit, crochet, hand sew and use a sewing machine.  

Why we need to support opportunities to eat together: 

These examples show how one project can lead to others that you may not expect. This can benefit a small group of people or reach out to the whole community. Eating veg was a part of all these activities, but veg was promoted alongside other benefits such as meeting new people, games and learning a skill.  

Having a regular community kitchen in local areas can create opportunities for people to share healthy home cooked food in a new, relaxed environment. They can be a place to meet new people and share experience and knowledge.  

In a world where unhealthy food is marketed as the normal choice of food to eat and life leaves us feeling we have no time or inspiration to cook, community meals could be the beginning of moving away from the foods that are bad for our health and help us to find more time for food that is healthy and affordable.  

If every community had a community kitchen, we would have more access to healthy, home cooked food. The kitchen could be used to share and learn more practical skills. There is exciting potential behind these activities: community kitchens could be linked to a community garden where the veg grown could be used in the recipes and help more people have more of an understanding about food by getting involved or by just being able to see them grow. There is no doubt in my mind that giving people more access and understanding of good food in this way will go a long way to support and promote good health, improve wellbeing, reduce isolation, equip us with essential skills and build community. 

You can find out more about community restaurants and their potential as a cost of living intervention in this policy briefing.  

Author: Veg Advocate Gemma Mcfarlane founded Sharing Skills CIC, which runs a Repair Cafe, community lunch, preloved school uniform exchange and activities that share practical skills and promote a circular economy. She is on the Lewes District Food Partnership steering committee and is working with them to develop their Grow Cook Eat Network. 

‘We had to build an army of food activists to work in their communities to remove the barriers to accessing veg.’ Simon Kenton-Lake, Peas Please team at Nourish Scotland 

Equally importantly, through their activities, VAs brought people together to learn from each other and build stronger communities through veg. These are long lasting outcomes that go beyond the Peas Please Project 

From May 2022 to March 2023, 35 VAs got involved in small teams, and delivered 15 activities across Scotland. 

VAs really got their creative juices flowing with cookery demonstrations, veg growing workshops, an outdoor veg harvest cook off event, veg poetry writing, a veg revolution at a local nursery, a magnificent Seasonal Veg Leaflet, mushroom cultivation workshop and much more. These have been groundbreaking initiatives, going far beyond veg consumption alone: they bring communities together and encourage people to engage with veg in a new, creative and positive way. They are about VAs coming up with their own solutions to address issues that they care about in their local areas.  

All of these initiatives showcase the power of VAs knowledge about the needs of their communities and how to find the solutions that work for them.  Given this opportunity our Veg Advocates delivered a diverse range of projects with care, creativity and love. Groundbreaking initiatives that go beyond their aim as VAs - making it easier for everyone to eat more veg. They have taken action and made their community a better place.  

‘For me the Veg Advocate programme helped me gain the confidence to know that I can do this work and bring about actual change. The Veg Advocate programme is the difference between things happening and not happening.’ Scotland Veg Advocate 

The next challenge should be how we can build on these initiatives to create sustainable, long lasting and measurable change in our local communities and empower communities around the country to do the same. 

In each of the blogs below, Scotland’s Veg Advocate Documenters Morvan Summers, Maxime Swift and Laura Thomson have identified three types of activities that Veg Advocates used to promote veg: Grow your own, developing resources and community action workshops.  

Grow your own! 

Growing initiatives like Mushroom Cultivation, Let’s Grow & Cook and creating raised beds for growing veg not only provided opportunities to learn about soil and how to grow veg but also provided safe spaces to meet, make friends and enjoy a time outside in the open air. 

The Mushroom Cultivation activity involved two workshops in Edinburgh, where participants were given a variety of unusual mushrooms to take home along with their own inoculation/growing kit. Feedback showed that they found the process interesting, engaging and learned a lot about the importance of soil in order to have healthy food.  

Fungi is an integral part of our ecosystem, they are so important to our health and they play such a vital role in helping plants grow. They are the connecting tissue of our ecosystem. It mirrors our relationship to food and our relationship to health. Scotland Veg Advocate. 

The ‘Greener Kirkcaldy’ Let’s Grow & Cook 6 to 8 week programme was designed for people with poor mental health and low self-esteem to meet and learn how to grow and cook. Vegetable seeds were distributed to participants. They had opportunities to engage both in-person and via a WhatsApp group to share their progress, keep in touch and share tips about their veg growing experience. They also had an in-person cook-along session to demonstrate how the vegetables they had grown could be cooked and to create an opportunity for people to meet face-to-face. Feedback was really positive with one participant saying how they now wanted to cook with the veg that they were growing. This activity brought together people that perhaps would not have met in other circumstances, gave them a purpose to go out, built confidence to grow their own veg and developed friendships and relationships of trust.  

Learning to grow your own veg empowers people to be resilient, builds confidence, connects us with nature, creates communities and helps people to be in the open air.  

Getting creative - resource development  

As well as the practical hands-on events, some VAs identified the importance of developing useful resources that can help people eat more veg.  

Peas, poems and place - these workshops explored veg using sensory cues and different writing techniques to express the importance of eating veg.  In a hybrid online-in-person space, participants could look at veg in a different way, exploring the taste, memories, and place of veg using poems, discussions and the creation of a veg-themed zine which will be printed for distribution. The aim was to increase food literacy, knowledge and consumption of vegetables, as well as allowing for cultural exchange and discussions on access to veg within the city and community.   

Poem 

When I am down  

I like green peas 

steamed with a little dill, 

and then  

some lemon juice  

salt and  

olive oil 

and a little feta sprinkled  

on top 

The hint of sweetness 

a taste of tart feta 

bitter of olive oil 

play a wicked symphony  

on my palate. 

The project allowed participants to explore veg through a different lens. In particular the workshop prompts allowed open expression of ideas/sharing of knowledge and discussion of many factors surrounding veg consumption – Veg Advocate, Peas, Places and Poems     

The Seasonal Veg Leaflet ‘Why eat more seasonal veg?’ is another example of creativity, designed to show the benefits of eating seasonally in Scotland. This is an 8 part leaflet with different veg pictured for the 4 seasons as well as a recipe idea for each season, it also had a 2 page overview of the benefits of eating seasonally, an acronym to help you shop seasonally and a blank shopping list.  

Initially 1000 copies were printed and distributed among all VA activities and individual VAs. Based on positive feedback and demand, 2500 more copies have been printed for secondary school home economics departments.  

The outreach of this activity has been incredible and its simple, beautiful design provides an easy and appealing guide to eating more seasonal vegetables. 

Both creative ground-breaking and long lasting initiatives have made veg more appealing, fun, informative and something everyone in Scotland can have and access.  

Community action through workshops 

A wide range of workshops have proved to be a popular way to bring people together, learn from each other, celebrate veg, make connections and create spaces of collaboration. VAs know best the needs of their communities, so each workshop was tailored to different audiences and specific topics of interest. 

The Veg Hive initiative, Bee Healthy, was developed by a group of Veg Advocates, with the aim of increasing veg consumption and improving people’s relationships with veg. They held two interactive events with their local community centre, Greener Kirkcaldy pantry and pop-up cafe, for members of their community experiencing food insecurity. These events involved simple and uncomplicated veg inspired activities using health promotion awareness tools, such as the NHS Eatwell Plate along with fun games such as ‘Name that Veg,’ using colourful play cards. The Veg Advocates wanted to understand what knowledge participants had of the Eatwell Plate and other health awareness schemes, and if these would be possible for them to use under their current financial circumstances.   

They also wanted to make sure this was a welcoming environment. They held a raffle with veg related prizes and handed out goodie bags containing their personally produced community recipe share booklet, with ingredients to make one of the meals, plus a copy of the ‘Why eat more seasonal veg?’ leaflet. During the event, participants were also encouraged to complete their own personal pledge to continue to eat more veg.  The VAs felt the events were interactive, relaxed and fun and were received positively by the participants, who felt they learnt more about veg and were able to be open and discuss their insecurities around food with others in a safe space. There were 45 participants in total between both events, most of the participants were families or older single adults, all of which were receiving benefits or on very low incomes. 

The overriding goal of the Veg Hive event was to engage with people who experience food insecurity who use a food pantry/hub/foodbank. We wanted to centre their accessibility and affordability to veg as well as to understand their relationship to vegetables and fruit – Veg Advocates, The Veg Hive Initiative   

Nursery ‘Yes to Veg’ activity was inspired by a Veg Advocate’s experience working as Kitchen Assistant at her local nursery. This Veg Advocate is passionate about veg and always made sure vegetables were included in the children’s meals. Sadly, they were also aware that no matter how much effort they put into adding more veg in children’s plates, most of the veg they were serving was going in the bin.  

As part of my job as Kitchen Assistant. I started to see the kids were not really eating the vegetables and because I am a VA, I asked myself - What can we do to improve that? Scotland Veg Advocate 

The funding allowed Veg Advocates to create an activity that changed the way kids were engaging with veg. And this was something everyone at the nursery had to be involved in  - teachers, parents, cleaners, the local organic shop and kitchen staff. Everyone needed to be part of the new veg nursery revolution. 

Together with teachers, this Veg Advocate came up with an activity focused on sensory learning and helping children become involved in the whole process of how they were getting their vegetables. Throughout one whole month the whole food environment in the nursery changed. Each week two local seasonal organic vegetables were introduced to the children. The Veg was part of every play area across the nursery and displayed so kids could help themselves whenever they wanted them.  

It’s fantastic, I’ve been looking at lots of photos of [child] preparing the vegetables, washing them, chopping them, cooking them on the play cooker and serving them. Parent of child at the nursery 

The nursery even set up a little market stall outside the nursery for families to take the veg home. So the learning continued at home. 

I think the introduction of vegetables to their environment has had a positive effect on their wellbeing. It has opened up all kinds of discussions, they have had a lot of dialogue between each other. Nursery staff member 

This project reached 130 children, their parents or carers and the nursery staff. It has received such positive feedback that Nourish Scotland is supporting the Veg Advocates to roll the project out in four more nurseries located in deprived communities.  

About Scotland’s Veg Advocate documenters: 

Veg Advocate Laura is a registered Associate Nutritionist with a Bachelor degree in Nutrition. Laura currently works as part of an NHS England weight management project and will be embarking on a new career hosting cookery sessions within the community via the Edinburgh Community Food Initiative/ Laura has a keen interest in the science of food and a real passion for health and wellbeing, she loves being able to share her knowledge to encourage and support others in improving their health. 

Veg Advocate, Morven Summers is a qualified nutritionist, and experienced chef. Recognising the challenge of having a toddler with food tantrums, Morven created FussEat to support new parents with advice, strategies, and recipes to build healthy eating habits. Morven also runs the F.E.D-method (Familiarise, Educate, and Develop) program, and has begun a Masters in Gastronomy to further her understanding of the cultural, social, geographic, religious, political, economic, environmental, and historical factors that shape the way we eat. 

Maxime is a Veg Advocate currently based in Glasgow. She has been volunteering as a Veg Advocate for the last few years and recently has worked as an Evaluator and Transcriber for various Veg Advocate projects. She is personally interested in improving stable access to food and especially vegetables, and is currently working in the sustainable restaurant sector whilst finishing her Masters.