From Meat-Heavy to Plant-Powered; Airedale’s Culinary Transformation

Going meat free in the North

Airedale NHS Foundation Trust recently embarked on a bold and forward-thinking journey with NHS Supply Chain: Food, to reduce meat consumption across its catering services, in a drive to reduce carbon trust wide, by introducing more plant-based dishes across their menus.

NHS Supply Chain: Food stepped in, and helped the trust to devise a Culinary Plan, a plan that looks at everything from looking at what is going on the menus to what ingredients are being used for dishes, innovative ways of working.

This initiative aligns with the Trust Green Plan and reflects a growing awareness of the environmental and health impacts of meat-heavy diets on patients’ welfare.

In line with the NHS 10 Year Health Plan, “from sickness to prevention”, the trust wanted to reduce the amount of meat eaten by patients, and help them make the healthy choice, not by eradicating meat but just looking at alternatives some of the time, such as hybrid meat products.

Millie Morgan, Culinary Specialist for the North at NHS Supply Chain: Food walked Airedale through every step of their journey, providing them with support at every turn whilst their team did all the hard work. Millie has become a culinary advisor to the trust, and an expert and outside influence they can turn to if they wish to seek advice, or simply sense check an idea they are having.

In this vein, the implementation began to reduce the amount of meat patients, staff and visitors were eating at the hospital sites. Millie started by writing a Culinary Plan with the trust, breaking the “problem” down, and working out where changes could be made.

Airedale were always on the front foot, wanting to make changes and improvements to reduce carbon wherever they could. They knew food was a key area where they could do this, so I worked with them on this initiative.

Millie Morgan, Culinary Specialist for the North, NHS Supply Chain: Food

Millie and the Airedale team started by looking at the menus for the staff Restaurant and trialled some new meals at a Culinary Engagement Day aimed at staff and visitors, showcasing some of the meat free alternatives on offer, and just how tasty they could be. Millie helped by introducing the trust to new Culinary Concepts, recipe books and collections devised by NHS Supply Chain: Food’s Culinary and Dietetics Team, to showcase different cuisines within NHS hospitals for patients, staff and visitors.

The concepts were designed to bring inspiration to these sites and help invigorate hospital culinary teams in their day-to-day cooking. Dishes including a Loaded Mac (Macaroni) Station, a Malaysian Curry and Asian Street Food wraps were served on the Culinary Engagement Day, bringing a lift to the menu and exciting the staff in the Restaurant.  These dishes featured some meat free products, showing what could be done with vegetable-based substitutes, which could be stored in an ambient area within the hospital kitchen, proving what could be done within the hospital sites with limited storage available.

The day was a true success, many of the Culinary staff who had been involved in preparing and cooking the dishes, and also tried them, rated the new meals as ten out of ten, and called them “delicious”, “flavourful”, and also commented on how it had helped them to understand some more sustainable meat free options when cooking.

The next step for the team was to hone their skills and develop their teamwork ethic and dynamic further. Millie was also keen to keep the energy going within the team following on from the changes that were being made to the menus, and to continue the momentum. The Culinary Team were asked if they’d like to attend a Skills Academy, an NHS Supply Chain: Food concept, to enhance the skillset of Culinary Assistants within hospitals, and address the need for them to feel excited and motivated in their day-to-day roles.

This upskilling day helped the team to get away from their normal setting, the kitchen at Airedale, and attend Leeds Cookery School for an invigorating day of challenges, exercises and also time to let loose in the kitchen and experiment, creating something unique they could take back to their roles and kitchens.

The event was well attended and again was scored ten out of ten by most participants. Millie led the day with the help of her colleagues in the Culinary and Dietetic Teams from NHS Supply Chain: Food, and the day centred around looking at ways to substitute meat in various dishes, again in order to aid Airedale in their overall aim of reducing carbon and as part of the trusts Carbon Reduction Plan.  

This piece of work saw some real key achievements made by the trust, with the assistance of the NHS Supply Chain: Food team. Namely they have produced a carbon mapped menu (displaying displays their estimated carbon footprint) and rolled it out. This menu promotes sustainable dining as well as increasing transparency, driving behavioural change and helps everyone evaluate the impact, looking at the positive effects of introducing meat free and meat hybrid-based meals onto the new menu.

The new menu was written and implemented, with seven new recipes being used on the staff restaurant menu with these lower carbon ingredient options. The carbon reduction went from an average of Category D to Category C/B on the new menu, meaning that the carbon emissions significantly went down from the changes, giving the trust a real sense of achievement.

All recipes were put through our food system, Nutritics, which allows us to input the recipes and all the data around the products, which then provides us with a carbon footprint stamp, depending on how much C02 is produced from that recipe/food. It puts it into a certain category depending on how high the C02 output is. Having reformulated the recipes, they became more carbon friendly. We could then see the impact this was having on the stamp and where they sat in the category A to E, A being low C02, E being very high C02. Lowering this and getting closer to the A category, gave us a good indication that we were achieving our goal.

Millie Morgan, Culinary Specialist for the North, NHS Supply Chain: Food

Now the trust has reduced its carbon emissions on its food category with the help of Millie, a trusted advisor, and the team their next steps are to look at other areas they can improve upon within the hospital sites, to have an effect on the overall impact of carbon and the reduction of it within Airedale.

Airedale is a forward-thinking Trust across Catering, Dietetics and Procurement.  The support and attitude of all departments, with keen determination to provide the best possible food and service, to patients, staff and visitors alike, is one of the main reasons such events provided by the NHS Supply Chain:  Food team are so successful.

Millie is still working with the Trust on lower carbon innovation, new recipe ideas and products that can give the Trust flexibility, new ideas and on-going support to achieve their goals with carbon.

All the Trusts and NHS Supply Chain: Food’s objectives were met, and there has been a great cultural shift amongst the team and the diners with the perception of meat-free meals evolving amongst staff, and so in turn patients and visitors.

To find out how you can go meat-free or reduce your carbon with the help of NHS Supply Chain: Food please get in touch with your Local Food Account Manager today.

See our Useful Links section to view a list of your local contacts.