Thomasina Miers has spent years making the case for better food – flavourful, seasonal, and responsibly sourced. As co-founder of Wahaca, she helped introduce a different vision of Mexican food to the UK, one rooted in fresh ingredients rather than the clichés of Tex-Mex. Beyond restaurants, she has campaigned for better food education, worked to improve school meals, and been an advocate for farming that works with nature, not against it.
Miers is pragmatic rather than preachy. Raised in a household where waste was avoided and seasonal eating was instinctive, she believes good food should be both accessible and enjoyable. Here, she reflects on childhood influences, the politics of eating, and why small shifts in behaviour matter more than people think.
Food was intrinsic to my childhood. While my brother and sister would find games and make things out of leaves, I would be in the kitchen – the one place where I felt I could create and do something interesting, rather than being shut in the playroom for an hour every day.
There wasn’t much money, so we ate in season, we made feasts out of leftovers, and never wasted food; we’d make stock with every last scrap. Even bones scraped off the plate would go into a broth. Meat was always good quality, but there was less of it because it was expensive.
Instead, we had loads of vegetables, prepared in a way that made them delicious. I remember some of our suppers vividly. We’d sometimes have a globe artichoke with butter – my mother would salt the butter and burn it until it was nutty and brown. It was delicious and, unconsciously quite an environmentally astute way of eating.
That’s why, when we set up Wahaca, it felt completely natural for the restaurant to champion vegetarian food. For me, it was an obvious choice, shaped by my winding journey into food.
I remember when I worked at Petersham Nurseries there was this bowl of spinach soup on the menu for about £8, which felt incredibly expensive for a first course. So when we launched Wahaca, I wanted it to be inclusive – affordable for everyone. I also wanted people to know what real Mexican food was, because it drove me mad that everyone thought Mexican food was just Tex-Mex, which it absolutely isn’t.
I remember reading an article about Mexico and thinking about the Indigenous Mexican diet – it’s amazing: beans, corn, loads of vegetables. The protein comes from the beans, from ground nuts and pumpkin seeds, and then a little bit of fish or turkey – just scavenged bits of protein if you’re lucky.
But I also remember reading about diets across the world and how, actually, the Mesoamerican diet wasn’t as rich in protein as we sometimes think. That’s what’s fascinating about protein – it has always been a marker of wealth. If you look back 400 years in England, the rich ate beef, and the poor ate bread with a bit of gravy. There’s always been this aspiration to have more protein, which is why, now, when people are so disconnected from the environment, they think, “I can have chicken for lunch and chicken for dinner. I can have a bacon sandwich for breakfast.” It feels habitual.
Culturally there’s still a huge attachment to meat. On the one hand, we need protein to be healthy, but on the other, where we get it from is shaped entirely by geography and tradition. In southern India, for example, people have a naturally vegetarian diet. If you go to Kerala, for instance, you eat mostly vegetables and come away feeling amazing! But in northern Europe, historically, diets have been quite meat-heavy. And now, we’re eating way more meat than we used to.
There’s also a real backlash, and it ties into politics. Look at America – young men who follow Trump, or listen to Joe Rogan’s podcast, often push back against the idea of reducing meat consumption. There’s this attitude of, “white liberals can’t tell me I can’t eat meat three times a day. I’m a man, I need my protein, it builds my muscles.” It’s an identity thing as much as a dietary choice.
There's a similar battle to be fought in schools. I co-founded a charity called Chefs in Schools and one of the ways we balance the cost of serving better food in schools is by having two vegetarian days a week, which allows us to buy better-quality ingredients for the remaining three days. But there’s always this parental concern – “Oh no, my child needs protein!” – as if they can’t get that from anything but meat. Of course, there are endless sources of plant-based protein. Schools should be a place where children eat well – fresh, seasonal vegetables, less meat, lots of pulses. That’s an obvious way to improve people’s diets.
You can’t be too worthy – it’s so boring. Worthiness turns people off.
Food is a fast track to people’s hearts and minds, but it’s also incredibly divisive – people don’t want to be told how to eat. It’s such a personal thing, and as a restaurant group, we’ve always been aware of that. We talk more now about what we do than ever before, but in the early days we were careful. You can’t be too worthy – it’s so boring. Worthiness turns people off.
The challenge is: how do you inspire people in a way that’s exciting and delicious? How do you give people hope? How do you turn them on to change rather than putting them off? Big food companies don’t have this problem – they spend millions on research and advertising, constantly bombarding us with images of delicious, irresistible food that taps into our primal cravings for fat and sugar. It’s easy for them.
So, how do we counter that? How do we create marketing or advertising that is hopeful? That’s a huge question, not just for restaurants, but for NGOs and campaigners trying to shift our food systems.
Because I’ve seen it; I’ve seen where hope lies. I’ve been to the farms where the cattle are raised without herbicides, pesticides, or fungicides. Where the birdlife is coming back. Where you dig into the soil, and it’s full of worms and dung beetles, and the cow pats are teeming with life. That’s hope. And that’s what keeps me inspired. I surround myself with people who are hopeful – farmers doing the right thing, chefs who want to do better.
It’s also why I feel a responsibility to convince other restaurauteurs to join us. I was at a Soil Association event recently, specifically to talk to other restaurant owners. Wahaca's regenerative beef supplier, Grassroots, has a queue of farmers wanting to get involved and do the right thing – but right now the beef that most farmers produce is treated as a commodity crop, so they don’t get any added value for doing things better. That has to change.
Fundamentally, “less is more” should be central to how we eat. People talk about flying less to cut emissions, but aviation accounts for around 3% of global emissions – whereas food is responsible for over 30%. That’s an enormous difference.
When we talk about polluted waterways, no one mentions the impact of chicken farms
What I find empowering is that, while we may feel tiny in the grand scheme of things, we can have a huge impact just by eating a bit less meat. And I catch myself sometimes. It’s actually quite easy to slip into eating more meat without really thinking about it. If you’re vegetarian, you’ve already made that shift. But if you still eat meat, it can creep in.
Part of the problem is how incredibly cheap it is to buy factory-farmed meat, especially chicken. The government is still allowing chicken farms to expand – there’s been something like 11% growth in the industry from one year to the next. And when we talk about polluted waterways, no one mentions the impact of chicken farms. Instead, all the blame is placed on water companies. But the chicken industry is responsible for a vast amount of pollution.
And at the end of the day, that’s driven by consumer demand – people buying bucket chicken for £3.99 at KFC. That’s the reality of why our rivers are in such a state. But the government is too afraid to call it out. Politicians are cowards when it comes to saying, “eat a bit less meat.” They won’t touch it. But that’s the issue. Meat should be expensive because it’s expensive to produce properly.
That said, many people in the UK are living on the breadline and don’t own a kitchen or have access to one. So for those communities, cooking fresh vegetables isn’t just about affordability – it’s about access. They might not have the facilities or the skills to prepare food from scratch. That’s where initiatives like social canteens come in, providing not just meals but a sense of community and dignity. But support for such solutions depends on political will – something often lacking when food insecurity is treated as an individual failing rather than a systemic issue.
Progress in addressing these issues often faces resistance. We have a very aggressive, bullying press. They love tearing people down, especially politicians trying to do the right thing. It’s destructive. And then there’s social media, which thrives on outrage and drama. These forces combined make politicians terrified of taking action. And let’s not even get started on the corruption of the food and pharmaceutical industries. The pharmaceutical companies stand to make billions, and big food is deeply intertwined with them. It’s all connected.
But we just have to keep going. That’s the only way forward. For me, the message is ultimately one of hope. If you only look at the big picture, it’s overwhelming. But if you focus on what you can do, it makes all the difference. And that’s how we get through this – by making changes that feel good and bring joy. The most radical thing we can do right now is connect; find hope, find meaning, be outside, move, and feel the sun on our skin. And if we can hold onto these simple things, we have a real shot at building a better food system and a better world.
As told to Charlotte Owen-Burge on 7 February 2025. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What next?
If this resonates with you, there are ways to get involved. Whether it’s supporting better school meals, choosing food that’s farmed with nature in mind, or backing farmers doing things differently, here are a few places to start:
Chefs in Schools – Help get fresh, nutritious food into school kitchens.
Grassroots Farming – If you eat or serve meat, support farmers committed to regenerative agriculture by choosing restaurants, such as Wahaca, and suppliers that source responsibly.
Soil Association – From organic certification to food policy campaigns, find out how you can advocate for better food and farming.
Concerned about polluted rivers? Sign this petition
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