Vegetarian for Life

We have gathered links to content on the site that you may find useful if you run or work in a care home. Please contact us if there is something you are looking for that you can’t find.
Information for UK Care Homes

Sign your organisation up to join our UK – List. List membership is free, and the benefits include free marketing for homes, regular new recipes for residents to enjoy, and a free caterer training DVD.

A guide and training programme to help people catering for people with allergies, intolerances, and religious, philosophical and cultural dietary beliefs.

Find out more about our UK List of ‘veggie friendly’ care homes, retirement complexes, food suppliers and other services that cater for older people and follow the VfL Code of Good Practice.
Best practice guidance on catering for older vegetarians and vegans. Explains what vegetarians do and don’t eat, and common stumbling blocks when catering for them. Also features a downloadable poster to display in your kitchen.
Cater for older vegetarians and vegans well, and with confidence. We provide training classes for caterers, and video training via our free DVD. Classes can take place onsite, anywhere in the UK, or in the Cordon Vert training kitchens in Altrincham, Cheshire.
See how easy it is to cater for vegetarians or vegans with our ideas for a 4-week cycle of meals. The planners offer a good daily nutritional balance, and great food variety over each week. All the meals can be served to non-vegetarians – and many are designed so they can be prepared alongside similar non-veggie meals.
Our guides on catering for older vegetarians and vegans, with relevant nutrition, recipes, and healthy living advice. Features catering and healthy living handbooks, tips on cooking on a budget, nutrition for older vegetarians and vegans and more.
Vegetarian and vegan recipe ideas, from easy recipes for one through to budget cookery and recipes with a festive twist. Great ideas for Burns Night and Valentine’s Day through to Easter, Halloween and Christmas.
There are excellent websites that list popular vegan ingredients. One website that we particularly like is Vegan Recipe Club. And before you feel daunted about the number of ingredients on these lists, remember that you may already have some of them. Also, you do not need everything listed in order to cook a vegan meal. Start gradually and over time you will build up a range of ingredients that you are familiar with and use frequently.
​Find a ‘veggie-friendly’ care home, retirement complex, food supplier or other service that caters for older people and follows the VfL Code of Good Practice. We have veggie friendly UK List members in most parts of the United Kingdom.

The annual VfL Award for Excellence in Vegetarian Care Catering is for the individual who has responded creatively and enthusiastically to the challenge of catering for vegetarians in a care home setting. The Award will next be open for entries in Summer 2020. Visit this page to find out more about the current winner.

Find out what vegans don’t eat by using our easy-to-follow best practice guide for caterers.
Many leading supermarkets stock vegan products so you will not have to worry about having to research specialist suppliers. For a quick way to find out what vegan items your local supermarket stocks, try My Supermarket or The Vegan Womble.
Probably the easiest way to begin looking after a vegan resident is to cook vegan versions of meals you are already familiar with. Not only will this make you feel confident but it means that many of the ingredients will overlap with the meals you are producing for your other residents. A very clear and practical guide to this approach can be found here. If you feel you would like to explore vegan recipes further, we have a wide range of delicious recipes available through our own website. Having tried many of them we can confidently say that they are delicious.

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