Food and Inclusion

Making everyone welcome

There are many aspects that need to work together to create inclusive environments, experiences and people. We talk about inclusive communication in our blogs or the pathways towards meeting access needs.

A topic close to my heart is food and inclusion. Cooking and sharing food and drinks that everyone can eat and that’s tasty, filling and pleasing to the eye is part of inclusion. Nothing says you’re not welcome more than the “vegan option” of, a lettuce leaf on a rice cake, for your lunch.

Accumulation of needs

If you have access needs, sorting out your own food or being served poor-quality food can be both stressful and exhausting. This situation adds unnecessary strain to an already challenging experience.

You may have a condition that causes pain and tiredness but you might end up always carrying food with you, if you’re concerned your needs won’t be met. You might go out and buy your own lunch when everyone is chatting and getting to know each other at lunchtime. Or you might just eat that salad sandwich or the dry salad with no dressing without protein. If you’ve gone for the poorly catered option, you may spend the afternoon being hungry and distracted unless you had a bag of nuts in your bag. Not a good experience.

Food inclusivity means ensuring dietary preferences and needs are met. We follow our rules for inclusivity which is ask and don’t ask.

• We ask people upfront about their needs and preferences.
• But we also do basic things automatically.

If you are planning a big public event, do you wait till someone asks for wheelchair access or do you just make it wheelchair accessible? So many people don’t eat meat or fish for personal, ethical, health or religious reasons. Don’t wait to be asked. Always have healthy vegan options.

What are the steps to food inclusivity?

1. Ask for dietary preferences even if it’s just tea, coffee and biscuits. Not having suitable food or drink can make people feel excluded. Make sure you always have some vegan biscuits. Many biscuits are accidentally vegan ^[1]. Omnivores won’t notice or care that they are vegan. Have a packet of oat, soya or almond milk just in case.
2. If people do have special diets keep their food separate with their name on it, or labelled as vegetarian/vegan. Another anxiety when you have a different diet is the omnivores will help themselves to the small amount of food set aside for you. Top marks to Aggregates in Oban for their catering. We have nearly starved in London and Manchester. But up in the Scottish Highlands the catering team for Aggregates knew exactly how to provide inclusive food.
3. Vegan or vegetarian food should not be mixed with meat or fish. Surprisingly a lot of caterers don’t seem to observe this. Are they waiting to be told that vegans or vegetarians will be present? Or don’t they realise that presenting vegetarian food that is mixed with meat or fish means it is no longer vegetarian? Same applies for vegan food.
4. Consider making more of your food vegetarian or vegan simply because most people will eat it.

What is good vegetarian or vegan food

• Pleasing to the eye.
• Tasty - With vegan and vegetarian food, the tendency can be just to remove elements of a meal or snack till they meet the criteria. Instead of doing this looking at preparing food and cooking in a different way works better. It does require a little bit of work to get up to speed on good vegan and vegetarian food if you are unfamiliar with it. A warning bell should ring if catering offer to take out lots of things. A cheese sandwich without the cheese – really?
• Filling - Frequently vegan offerings, which are often also the vegetarian option have virtually no protein. A grilled mushroom burger or a cauliflower steak is not going to fill you up or get you through the afternoon.
  • For vegans’ good protein sources are nuts, seeds, soya (tofu, tempeh, soya beans), beans and pulses.
  • For vegetarians’ cheese (but make sure its vegetarian) and other dairy, eggs and everything listed for vegans.

Don’t look at what mainstream restaurants do

If you are catering for a work lunch or event you might be tempted to look at what mainstream restaurants are doing. Please don’t. Their tendency over the last few years is to lump all special diets together so that’s vegetarian, vegan, allergies and intolerances. What you often get is something that’s not tasty, doesn’t fill you up or is essentially a side dish. Look at those principles for What is good vegetarian or vegan food.

Caterers don’t understand vegetarian and vegan food

Obviously, some do but a lot don’t. If you are catering an event share with the caterers What is good vegetarian or vegan food
and What are the steps to food inclusivity? Ask them for a full menu, don’t accept placeholders like “vegetarian option” or “vegan option”. If caterers can’t meet basic standards, it’s time to find someone else.

Be careful of meat substitutes and vegan cheese. Most are ultra processed and much vegan cheese has no protein with poor nutritional value. If you want to go with the meat substitute, maybe go half and half and provide something that isn’t processed as well.

Who’s not eating meat?

• The vegetarian society says over 3 million people in the UK are vegetarian or vegan ^[2]. That’s 4.5% of the population.
• About 13% of British people follow a flexitarian diet. ^[3]
• There are ethnic and religious differences ^[4] in meat consumption. This means some people may not eat meat, fish or other food in places where they are not confident the food meets their religious dietary needs.
• Some people don’t eat meat, fish or dairy for ethical reasons unless they know where it was sourced from and how the produce was raised or treated. Did you eat any horsemeat in 2013? ^[5]
• Some try and eat a bit less meat. Meat free Monday ^[6] set up by Paul, Stella and Mary McCartney has been a great success.
• And there are allergies and intolerances which limit what people can eat.

Your next catered event

• Work towards more good quality vegan and vegetarian food in your catering.
• Educate your caterers about expected standards.
• Tell delegates in advance about the catering, ensuring one less thing to worry about.

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References

1. Accidentally vegan biscuits
2. Vegetarian society statistics on vegetarians and vegans
3. British people following a flexitarian diet
4. UK study by Elif Naz Çoker, Rachel Pechey, Susan A. Jebb, Ethnic differences in meat consumption attitudes, norms and behaviors
5. Guardian article on the 2013 horsemeat in scandal
6. Meat free Monday set up by Paul, Stella and Mary McCartney