The €11 Billion Opportunity of Plant-Forward Public Catering

Across the EU, public kitchens serve a lot of meals. Schools, hospitals, care homes, universities, army bases and prisons together spend about €45.8 billion a year on food, feeding up to 54 million people every day. What those kitchens buy matters: for people’s health, for the environment, and for public budgets. Right now about 43% of that money is spent on animal products, which leaves the average public plate heavy on meat and light on vegetables, beans and fibre. The EU already agrees that public food buying should reward more than the lowest sticker price; environmental and public health costs should also enter the equation. The question is which framework can actually deliver on sustainability, health, and economic goals all at once. 

Our latest report with ProVeg sought to answer this. You can read the full report here.

We built our own economic model for all 27 EU countries. For each one we worked out three kinds of cost that come with today’s mix of animal and plant foods: what the ingredients cost, what the environmental damage costs, and what the resulting ill health costs. We priced the health side using the OECD’s standard method for valuing lives, applied to the IHME Global Burden of Disease data. For the environmental side, we used True Cost Pricing, covering climate, air and water pollution, land use, and scarce water withdrawal. Then we asked a simple question: what happens if public kitchens spend more of their budget on plant foods? We tested three targets: 65%, 75%, and 85% plant-based. That 85% figure comes from the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet, which draws about 87% of its calories from plants.

At 85%, the EU would be roughly €11.61 billion a year better off. That splits into €3.16 billion saved on ingredients, €4.37 billion in environmental damage avoided, and €4.08 billion in health costs avoided. Put another way, that’s €215 for every person these kitchens feed, and about €1.3 million slipping away for every hour the current system carries on unchanged. Germany alone would gain €2.53 billion a year, France €2.4 billion.

The rest of the numbers are just as easy to picture. The environmental gain is worth 8.89 million tonnes of CO₂ a year, about the same as taking 4.44 million cars off Europe’s roads. Shifting school meals away from red and processed meat could mean 396,187 fewer adults developing obesity, more people than live in the city of Bologna. All of it sits against a grim baseline: today’s eating patterns are linked to more than 130,000 preventable deaths a year, one every four minutes.

The clever part is that the savings pay for the rest. Because plant-forward menus are cheaper to buy (around 25% cheaper than meals built around meat and dairy), they free up money in the budget. That spare cash can fund the report’s recommended 25% organic target without the overall food bill going up. The approach also fits where the EU already wants to go. It creates steady demand for European-grown beans and pulses, which means leaning less on imported protein. It backs the farmer diversification built into the CAP 2028-2034 plans. And because it works as a simple budget rule rather than a fixed menu, every country can hit the target while keeping its own food culture: Italy can still serve Ribollita, Greece its Fasolada. To make it happen, the report sets out five policy packages, starting with rewriting the EU Public Procurement Directive so contracts stop going to the cheapest bid and start rewarding sustainability.

Two things are worth keeping in mind. These are modelled figures, not money already in the bank. They depend on the shift actually happening, which is why the report pairs its targets with practical support: training for chefs, help for farmers, and smarter menu defaults. And 85% is a share of the budget, not a ban on animal products. The aim is to make the healthy, sustainable choice the easy one, while leaving the choice intact.