Switch Up Your Lunch

Produce from the day

On Tuesday 13 June College pledged to eat vegetarian or vegan for lunch as part of the Oxfordshire Greentech and Good Food Oxfordshire’s Switch Up Your Lunch Campaign; this was set up to encourage a healthier and more climate-friendly food choice, and is now in its 5th year. While the pledge is only asking participants to switch to a vegetarian or vegan lunch for one day, the idea behind the switch is to encourage everyone to make vegetables a more prominent part of their regular mealtimes. Last year, a total of 22,000 people across 47 organisations took part – including University of Oxford colleges, Oxford Brookes University, the Said Business School, businesses from around the county and Oxfordshire County Council – as well as many individual participants.

Executive Chef Darren Lomas and team

In addition to our lunch offering, we took it a little further and served a complete vegetarian menu for Formal Hall during the evening, which consisted of:

• Roasted Goat Cheese, New Potato and Beetroot Salad with a Chive and Truffle Salad
• Butternut Squash, Emmental, Spinach and Quinoa Roulade with a creamy Pea Puree, Fondant Potato, Spring Greens and a Herb Oil
• Raspberry and Rhubarb Frangipane Tart, Chantilly Cream and Coulis

Staff in the Alington Room

A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is very clear. Change is needed urgently and there is one way that every household can get involved: via what we eat. By switching our diet to mostly plant-based meals, and reducing our dairy and meat intake, individuals can drastically reduce their carbon emissions. In fact, a recent study suggests that the carbon emissions of vegetarian diets are 59% lower than those of meat eaters.

Vegetable based diets also have multiple health benefits, with research demonstrating benefits to both your physical and mental health from eating more vegetables. Yet in the UK, 77% of adults and 89% of children still don’t eat their 5-a-day.

Find out more about Oxfordshire Greentech and Good Food Oxfordshire’s Switch Up Your Lunch Campaign.

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