Hi,

You’ll be pleased to hear that you’ve been nominated Best vegan catering service in the UK Vegan Awards 2010!

The UK Vegan Awards 2010 are an opportunity to recognise and celebrate the products, places, companies, organisations and campaign groups who make a real difference to veganism, animals and the environment.

Voting started a few days ago and will end at midnight on Thurs 28th October. Winners will be announced and awards presented at the West Midlands Vegan Festival on Sat 30th October. http://www.midlandsveganfestival.org.uk

Everyone who votes has the chance to win a £30 gift voucher from an online vegan shop.

More details about the awards can be found here http://www.veganmidlands.org.uk/festival/veganawards.html

Please feel free to encourage your customers to vote for you!

Best wishes,
Kevin

Midlands Vegan Campaigns
For the benefit of animals, people & the planet

BSustained was established in 2007 using locally produced and organic ingredients to provide vegan and vegetarian catering for everything from business conferences and weddings to children’s parties. It has used a variety of support in the last two years including Business Links and is now not just providing healthy catering options to clients but is also providing healthy eatying training for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is a major new initiative supported by the NHS and other funding bodies and gives people help and guidance on gardening and growing produce, managing to eat ‘a diet of 5 a Day on a Budget’ and providing help and support to schools and community groups on healthy eating and organic gardening.

Growth without compromise

This has helped her overcome the challenges of growth to get to the point now where, despite the downturn, she is going from “strength to strength”. She is excited yet cautious about the obvious growth potential of her business. She has undertaken a root and branch review of her business model and made sure it is viable and fit for purpose but she doesn’t want growth for growth’s sake. “Our business relies on getting the right people in place; we want to build our reputation and profile nationally but this should not be done at the expense of compromising what we deliver.”

Reducing our dependence on animal products is increasingly interesting in a hungry world where farm animals are consuming a lot of resources and producing a lot of pollution, not to mention the obesity epidemic. To many veganism sounds about as attractive as sitting in a cell wearing a hair shirt – so a festival is good news if you want to check out whether it really can be enjoyable.

BSustained has shown time and time again that veg isn’t boring – Birgit has even had children eating out of her hand, learning vegan cookery skills (see A Children’s Party to Remember.

The organisers promise

• A feast of delicious vegan food
• Cookery demos
• Free recipes, health factsheets & nutrition advice
• Vegan cosmetics, toiletries & healthcare products
• Ethical clothing & footwear stalls
• 3 talk areas, each with a full programme of speakers, films & workshops

… and even live music. Visit the Festival website at www.veganmidlands.org.uk/festival. You can read more there about the relevance of veganism to

• animal suffering
• risks to our own health
• hunger in the developing world
• environmental damage

'Create a Plate' vegan catering at last year's festival

Both photos courtesy of veganmidlands.org.uk

Birgit works with a range of people teaching them how to plant, grow and cook their own food. Originally from Germany she started gardening with her dad when she was five and her love of fresh food has continued to grow. But she is still concerned about how food production affects distribution, climate change and sustainability.

Her view on super foods is that people should opt for a varied diet that embraces seasonal produce, and in that way they’re sure to consume foods that are good for them.

She says: “There is little doubt that there are foods that are better than others but my general advice to people is to make sure they eat a varied diet.

“I tell people that the rainbow diet is always the best way – and that basically means just to eat foods that are from each colour of the rainbow. This is a great way to introduce children to eating different kinds of foods as its a novel way of going about things and rainbows have very positive connotations.
If I could get people to do anything it would be to make sure they eat seasonably as that can be the best way to keep the cost of food affordable.”

Birgit gives this advice to clients at the NHS and to homeless people taking part in the SIFA Fireside project. She also hosts Five a Day on a Budget cookery courses to encourage people to learn all they can about eating well.

She says: “I think it is a really important part of a healthy lifestyle to eat the right kinds of foods. Picking good food is a great starting point for creating a better life and I believe it is important to eat good quality food to encourage health all round. Most people wonder how they’ll be able to get Five-A-Day into their diet but it doesn’t have to be difficult. I teach people that growing their own food can really help with self esteem, mental health issues and just improving health in general as being outside means you are exposed to Vitamin D, which improves health.”

See the full article by Patrice John on the Birmingham Mail website.

The government is attempting a very holistic view of things, looking at the worldwide food situation over the next 40 years, global warming, health, food poverty, waste, and much more. Let’s hope it leads to some action. Here’s a quote from Food 2030:

The Food System – what are we aiming for?

Food that is produced, processed, distributed and consumed in a society where:

• People choose to eat a healthy diet, and have reliable access to affordable healthy and safe food
• People understand the origins of their food and are able to make informed choices over what they eat
• People treat food as a source of wellbeing and enjoyment e.g. through leisure activities such as growing and cooking food.

Hilary Benn said, “We need everyone in the food system to get involved — from farmers and retailers to the health service, schools and consumers. Our strategy needs to cover all aspects of our food — production, processing, distribution, retail, consumption and disposal.”

And he made the links between food, health and environment:

“Last year the world had a wake-up call with the sudden oil and food price rises, but the full environmental costs and the costs to our health remain significant and hidden. We need to tackle diet-related ill health that already costs the NHS and the wider economy billions of pounds each year.”

It’s been a busy week for DEFRA, who have also published the UK Food Security Assessment.

The UK currently produces only 73% of its own food. In a national or global emergency, we would have to eat a predominantly vegetarian diet — more cereals, fruit and vegetables and less meat and poultry. Why? Because animal production needs a lot more land than crops to get the same amount of food. Cereals now used to feed farm animals would go for human food instead.

DEFRA is inviting you to comment on the issues which led Birgit to set up BSustained. So get over there and tell them what you think! It might just make a difference.

• My last full day in Germany today. Off to my favourite lake this afternoon for a nice refreshing swim .. as it is very hot here today. #
• Off 2 market 2 get lots of lovely fruit &veg as am catering for a summer youth club @ brum ymca 4 'talking drums ltd' for all of next week. #
• ah, really looking 4ward to our parisian friends yvan and dodine coming to visit brum sunday or monday for a few days … cant wait! #
• got my shopping done 4 YMCA gruup catering nxt week: loads of veg, fruit and some good quality fruit yohurts as desserts – should be good. #

Harvesting potatoes at Moseley Montessori

Jo Ind recently wrote an article about BSustained in the Birmingham Post. One of the staff at Moseley Montessori , Aaliyah Foster, described the children’s response to Birgit’s sessions:-

“It was an amazing experience because the children were completely absorbed. They were totally engaged with handled the potatoes and vegetables and watching them being chopped and peeled and then cooked and the end result of sitting there and then eating. They didn’t take their eyes off the whole process.

“Surprisingly very few children get to see where a chip comes from, or get to see that a pea comes from a pod, so that was good. A lot of parents buy chopped up vegetables to it was great that the children had a chance to handle them.

“One of the highlights was when the children compared seeds and felt them and touched them and planted them and put their fingers into soil. Just a few weeks later they could see the results. The radishes came up a week later. They’ve been going out on a daily basis with their watering cans. They’re very proud of their little garden. It was a really rich experience.”

The children’s enthusiasm is hardly surprising. This is what Birgit told Jo about her own childhood encounter with vegetables:-

“I loved being outdoors, being active, growing things and looking after the garden and I always loved eating vegetables. I think that’s because we had grown them from the very beginning, proudly harvested them and eaten them straightaway from the garden. There was hardly any vegetable I didn’t like and I think that’s a bit part of it.”

Jack & the beanstalk?

There’s a thread running from that early family experience all the way through Birgit’s gardening, cooking and teaching. Typically, she celebrated the vivid colours of fresh vegetables by making a stir-fry with the children, engaging all their senses in the whole process of food, from the seed to the crunch.

Meatless Thursdays in Belgium

But we’re happy to share information about the wider benefits of eating less meat, and the world is gradually catching up with the implications of animal farming for climate change. The city council in Ghent, Belgium, are encouraging everyone to go veggie every Thursday. On the first Veggie Day, in May 2009, the city council restaurant offered pancakes stuffed with cheese and spinach or mushrooms, and a salad. The city is also promoting vegetarian meals in its canteens, schools and restaurants. Kindergartens and primary schools will offer vegetarian meals on Thursdays from September 2009. The council hopes Ghent University and at least one of the hospitals will soon join in.

There’s more: free vegetarian recipes in the city magazine, cooking workshops for professionals, and a map of Ghent showing restaurants with vegetarian options. Birmingham City Council has got a long way to go – though Birmingham Vegetarians & Vegans may plug some of the information gaps, and BSustained provides training.

Ethical Vegetarian Awareness, which is behind the campaign, says that if every Ghent resident were to go meatless for just one day a week for a year, it would be the equivalent of taking 20,000 cars off the road.

How meat-eating heats the planet

Bryan Walsh put it like this in Time Magazine:

In a 2006 report, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concluded that worldwide livestock farming generates 18% of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions — by comparison, all the world’s cars, trains, planes and boats account for a combined 13% of greenhouse gas emissions. Much of livestock’s contribution to global warming come from deforestation, as the growing demand for meat results in trees being cut down to make space for pasture or farmland to grow animal feed. Livestock takes up a lot of space — nearly one-third of the earth’s entire landmass. In Latin America, the FAO estimates that some 70% of former forest cover has been converted for grazing. Lost forest cover heats the planet, because trees absorb CO2 while they’re alive — and when they’re burned or cut down, the greenhouse gas is released back into the atmosphere.

Then there’s manure — all that animal waste generates nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that has 296 times the warming effect of CO2. And of course, there is cow flatulence: as cattle digest grass or grain, they produce methane gas, of which they expel up to 200L a day. Given that there are 100 million cattle in the U.S. alone, and that methane has 23 times the warming impact of CO2, the gas adds up.

Health

Ghent officials also cite lowering the risk of heart disease, diabetes and obesity as a reason for their initiative. They believe they are the first city in the world to take such a step – though many Orthodox Christians in countries as far apart as Russia and Ethiopia have had vegan diets on Wednesdays and Fridays from time immemorial.

The information about Ghent came from Reuters

I recently hired Birgit for an event that consisted of 50 attendees. She was able to work within our budget surpassing all other quotes we had received. The menu she created was extremely impressive; it catered precisely to all our delegates’ dietary needs.

The setting up ran very smoothly, she was arrived on time and provided numerous colourful bowls, containers and buffet utensils all of which brightened up the buffet.

It was definitely apparent that a lot of time and dedication had gone into preparing the food; this definitely came across in the flavour and presentation. She put together a nutritious lunch consisting of a wide selection of fresh fruit and vegetables, alongside this was an imaginative combination of healthy dishes that made a nice change from sandwiches. We were extremely impressed by the reusable utensils and plates that came with the lunch as this was very environmentally friendly. There was more than enough food left over allowing people to have seconds and even thirds!

The overall feedback from our delegates was that they thoroughly enjoyed the lunch as it looked, tasted and smelt delicious.

I would not hesitate to hire Birgit again and I would recommend her as the food was extremely appealing and appetising.

Jane Gallagher, P/T Development Manager

To discuss your catering requirements, contact Birgit.

Birgit is a perfect example of a woman converting her passions, hobbies, interests and values into a business that fulfils her own ambitions, but also greatly benefits others. She’s a great role model to other women considering starting up – she has grown her business quickly whilst staying true to her strong personal values. Birgit had experienced some difficult life experiences before starting her business and has overcome these to follow her vision, launching her own business in the year before she reached 40.

Networking

Birgit is a dynamic networker and does this in a very altruistic way. When she has made a connection with another business, she will promote them to others to support their success as much as her own. She combines social support very effectively with professional support. Birgit is passionate about women in business and supporting other women in business, either by pursuing collaborative pieces of work, or by linking people together who may be able to support or benefit each others business. She is a strong advocate for others to follow their dreams and start their own business in something that they are not only passionate about, but which allows them to work flexibly and creatively whilst maintaining their personal values.

Birgit is a role model for others in terms of how she started her business and also how she operates.

Building a successful business

Birgit has grown her business and is set to make a small profit on top of her earnings in her second year of operation. She has spent time planning her business and works on her business plan, adapting to changes and new opportunities, whilst staying true to her personal values of sustainability, creativity and maintaining work/life balance.

BSustained works successfully within a number of schools, meeting the challenge of working in this sector in order to bring her values to the younger generation.

Professional and personal values

BSustained is focused around sustainability and reducing impact upon the environment. Birgit’s ethos is to work in a way that is ethically, environmentally, personally and culturally sustainable. BSustained works to make the links between food, enjoyment, health and the living planet.

Birgit’s longer term plan is to create a Community Interest Company which does the work of BSustained on a larger scale. She is already working towards this through growing her current business and bringing together a network of people with common values and business experience to become involved with the new social enterprise.

Birgit is outspoken on women’s rights and supports individual women to develop and grow on both a personal and professional basis.

Birgit is available for consultancy work of various kinds to help get women into business. She has wide experience in this field.