Officials are sympathetic to the initiative, but they are not about to completely eliminate meat.
Vantaa the youth council has taken a strict initiative to ban red meat in schools and kindergartens.
The youth council justifies its initiative on health, cost, equality and climate grounds.
By equal treatment, the youth council refers to young people who, due to their convictions, avoid red meat, especially for environmental reasons. Many children and young people from Vantaa also belong to religious groups that limit or prohibit the consumption of red meat.
Beef and pork are also a more expensive expenditure item in the city's budget than poultry, fish and vegetable protein sources.
“If the costs of food in educational institutions were cut by giving up red meat, the savings could be invested back into improving the quality of other food,” the youth council points out in its initiative.
Youth council the initiative gets a fairly sympathetic response from the administration, but the city is not yet ready for a direct meat ban. The city is currently making a major reform aimed at the development of school meals, which has been demanded by the city council.
Politicians added 400,000 euros to school meals in last year's budget. The background was concern about the decay of school food culture and supply interruptions during 2022, when hot food could run out on some days.
At that time, Vantaa had on average spent less money on school meals than other municipalities. In 2021, Vantaa spent 1.77 euros on one serving, while the average price of a school meal at that time was 2.92 euros. With the increase in budget money, the situation in Vantaa improved a little.
According to Deputy City Manager Katri Kalskee, Vantaa has already reduced the amount of red meat in school meals. “However, we are not completely giving up muscle.”
Education and Deputy Mayor of the Learning Industry Katri Kalske says that the city follows dietary recommendations, which are already strict. In those published last summer in the new Nordic dietary recommendations the weekly portion of red meat shrank from 500 grams to 350 grams.
The city has already favored other products instead of red meat. For example, minced meat is often minced chicken meat in various dishes.
According to Kalske, Vantaa's own school food development program will be completed this year. It aims for quality on the plate and wants an educational view of the eating situation. In addition to that, the third cornerstone of the development program is sustainability.
“We have to be able to do better, and yes we can do better,” says Kalske.
Vantaa, like other big cities, has a problem getting students to eat school food. Based on school health surveys, less than half of Vantaa middle school students eat school lunch every day.
Currently, the preparers are t
hinking about how to change the recipes and how to get the students to participate. When the program is completed at the end of the year, the politicians will also be told what its implementation would cost. Final decisions are made in the council.
School meals arouses great passions in different cities these days. In Helsinki last fall, there was a discussion about removing meat dishes in early childhood education, because the city of Oslo had made a decision about this.
“Red meat will not completely disappear from school meals in Vantaa, but the principles of sustainable eating will come true,” says Kalske.
He points out that there are many factors in school meals that can be sharpened. Even if the recipe is okay, the end result is affected by who is holding the bucket.
The majority of kindergartens and educational institutions in Vantaa are supplied with food by the city's own company Vantti. The share of private service providers is small.
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