Peas Please Prize Winners 2022

Peas Please Prizes– Winners 2022  
 

• Mark Newbold of Lidl wins Peas Please Individual Champion award 

• Lidl is among the biggest names In the line up of Peas Please pledge winners announced today. 

• Our corporate social responsibility manager Mark Newbold was named Peas Please Individual Champion 
• Lidl has added its weight to the 92% of food retailers, now signed up to the Peas Please pledge to increase veg consumption  
• Only one in four adults is eating enough veg to stay healthy. Almost a third of five to 10-year-olds are not getting one veg portion a day  
• All Peas Please winners committed to the challenge to give everyone a good diet with a goal of three billion veg portions to be served or sold by 2023    

In the first live ceremony for two years, the Food Foundation’s executive director Anna Taylor presented awards to the seven category winners of the 2022 Peas Please Prizes at a ceremony in the Yorkshire heartland of Leeds.

Mark Newbold corporate social responsibility manager at Lidl, was named as the Peas Please Individual Champion in recognition of his personal contribution to Lidl’s Peas Please pledger status. He has inspired his colleagues and shown strong leadership in the drive to raise the nation’s veg consumption.

“We have been really impressed by the way that Mark has engaged with the Peas Please initiative over the last year,” said Chloe MacKean, Business Engagement Manager, The Food Foundation.

“He has been instrumental in strengthening Lidl's pledge to promote veg and drive-up sales, and in getting the supermarket to commit to reporting transparently on their sales of vegetables. He has also continued to engage with us on the Healthy Start scheme and with our Peas Please Veg Advocates.

"Mark is a great asset to both Lidl and our Peas Please Pledger community. We are delighted to present him with this recognition.” 

Now in its fourth reporting year the Peas Please initiative has over 100 pledgers from across the food sector and including 92% of retailers who have all made pledges to promote and encourage people to eat more veg.

The seven awards all celebrate the achievements of imaginative businesses that are leading the way with schemes to drive up vegetable consumption.

Since the Peas Please initiative  launched in 2017  food industry pledgers have delivered an additional 636 million portions of vegetables into food systems across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

But the 2021 Peas Please progress report released at the end of last year, shows a serious deficit in veg consumption, with less than a quarter of adults eating enough vegetables a day, and almost a third of children eating less than the equivalent of one portion a day.

Research has shown that such poor diets are linked to almost 18,000 premature deaths a year in the UK. 

“We are delighted by the huge growth in industry support for the Peas Please project,” said Food Foundation executive director Anna Taylor.

“More and more businesses are recognising they have a crucial role in tackling the poor nutrition crisis which is causing an epidemic of obesity and ill health. It has been a particular pleasure and a privilege to work with the forward-thinking organisations that have won this year’s prizes.  

 New Pledgers join the campaign  

Other major supermarkets are also making significant new commitments to Peas Please, while Aldi, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose are well on the way to meeting their targets.   

Sainsbury’s has become our sixth Peas Please Pledger Champion with a variety of new initiatives (see below).  

Mark Newbold, the corporate social responsibility manager at Lidl, has been singled out for the Peas Please Individual Champion award, in recognition of his personal drive to support the target.

Hull Food Partnership, twice runner-up, has this year won first prize in the Veg City category, following the team’s triumph in recruiting 35 local organisations who between them have made a total of 48 veg pledges to date.  

Blackpool catering services have picked up the Veg-O-Meter prize for achieving a record-breaking 171% increase in providing more vegetables in meals and more vegetables in meals provided during school holidays.   

More organisations are joining Peas Please every month. Together we aim to transform Britain into a healthy nation of healthy eaters.  

Peas Please Prize Winners in full:

Peas Please Pledger Champion:  This award recognises organisations who have effectively implemented Peas Please pledges as a core part of their business proposition, including Peas Please in their company reporting or linking their pledges to company and staff performance appraisal.   

Winner: Sainsbury's.   

Sainsbury’s have renewed their pledge to increase the proportion of total vegetable sales by 1% of tonnage, and are encouraging customers to increase veg consumption with various schemes including the offer of competitively-priced 'Imperfectly Tasty' and 'Greengrocer' fruit and vegetables, to ensure that fresh produce is accessible to all customers.

Runner up: Henderson SPAR NI  

Peas Please Individual Champion: Recognising an outstanding individual contribution by a staff member within one of our participating pledger organisations which has given inspired leadership to their organisation’s Peas Please pledge.  

Winner: Mark Newbold, Lidl

Mark engaged with Peas Please and strengthened Lidl’s commitment to promote and drive up veg sales. Lidl is also one of the first retailers to offer new transparent reporting of such sales. Mark also actively looked for ways to support the government’s Healthy Start initiative and engaged with the Food Foundation’s Veg Advocate Dialogues.  

Runner up: Grace Ricotti, Aldi   

Veg City Prize: Celebrating effective integrated place-based approaches to increasing veg uptake at a local level for cities participating in the Veg Cities campaign  

Winner: Hull   

Hull Food Partnership has worked with the city council, voluntary and community sector organisations and food businesses. A total of 35 organisations have made an impressive 48 extra veg pledges, and the scheme is continuing to grow.  

Runner-up: Leeds   

Veg-O-Meter Prize: Rewarding the biggest percentage increase in vegetable portions sold or served by our pledgers between 2019/20 and 2020/21 reporting cycles  

Winner: Blackpool catering services   

Achieved a 171% increase in veg consumption by implementing new menus with more vegetables and increasing vegetable intake within school holidays meal provision.  

Runner up: Giraffe   

Peas Please Good Society Prize: Championing efforts to improve access to quality veg through farming innovation, better school food, and the Healthy Start scheme .  

Winner: School Holiday Enrichment programme (SHEP) Wales  

SHEP is a school-based education programme providing food and nutrition education, physical activity, enrichment sessions and healthy meals to children in areas of social deprivation during the school summer holidays in Wales. The SHEP Menu Principles ensure a minimum of two separate portions of vegetables and/or salad are served with every lunch meal.  

Runner-up: Bags of Taste   

Peas Please Rising Star: Recognising new Peas Please pledgers who have made effective and ambitious pledges to help everyone eat more veg.   

Winner: TastEd  

TastEd have engaged with 100 schools to help deliver taste education lessons and provide teacher training and resources so fresh fruit and vegetable can be brought into lessons. This has been shown to inspire children to use all their senses, encouraging them to explore and then choose to eat fruit and vegetables.  

[There is no runner-up for this category]  

Peas Please Innovation Prize: Recognising inspirational and innovative schemes to support organisational Peas Please pledges and our overall mission of boosting veg consumption. (Monitoring and evaluation by entrants of their own schemes is also considered by judges of this category)  

Winner: GroentenFruit Huis   

This company transitioned in-store nudging experiments into an online shopping environment during the covid pandemic. The group that was nudged brought 7% more vegetables and 6% more fruit. Nudges used included a fruit and vegetable meter giving shoppers’ baskets a high or low score.  

Runner up: Tesco

PEAS PLEASE PROGRESS REPORT 2021

SOCIAL MEDIA ASSETS -  Graphics

#Pledgerconference2022 #PeasPlease

Key Twitter accounts: @Food_Foundation @nourishscotland @foodsensewales @belfastfoodnet @food_NI @VegPowerUK @PeasPleaseUK

Notes to Editors 

• Veg Facts, Food Foundation 2016
• Veg Facts: In Brief: 2020
• Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, 2016. Country Profile: United Kingdom
• Peas Please 2020 Report

Please contact:   

Jo Ralling – 07770 500 858   jo.ralling@foodfoundation.org.uk  

Lois Rogers – 07770 350 822 -  lois.rogers@foodfoundation.org.uk