Back in November, West Philly Local reported on the Meatless Monday resolution that City Council passed urging residents to avoid eating meat just one day a week (Editor: you can read it here). The end of the article mentioned the next goal: get the Philadelphia School District to implement Meatless Monday.
I’d like to voice my support for Meatless Monday in Philly schools, now that the campaign is in full swing. I want the healthiest food possible available to children in our city, and adding more plant-based foods to the menu will help make that happen. While it would be great to serve organic, fresh, non-GMO fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes, I recognize that the District doesn’t have the means to do so. However, taking meat off the menu one day a week is an easily achievable step the District can take towards healthier meals.
I encourage everyone to visit www.PhillyMeatlessMonday.com to learn more about the campaign and to sign the petition urging the School District of Philadelphia to join many others that already participate in Meatless Monday.
Krystina Krysiak
West Philadelphia, PA
March 24th, 2014 at 7:48 am
I fully support the idea of meatless Mondays as a great way to make a small change and yet have an overall cumulative impact on student diet. A bunch of friends and I got in the practice of doing this during college, too.
March 27th, 2014 at 4:29 pm
I’m all about advocating for healthier food options in schools, but I’m more than a little skeptical that just taking meat off the menu does anything to make the rest of the food served any healthier. Meatless does not equal healthy. Replacements to meat in the LA School District for this month include cheese calzones and cheese sandwiches–not exactly part of a healthy diet. Do we really expect the quality of food offerings to be markedly better on Mondays without meat? It’s more likely, given the budgetary concerns of the SDP, that we’ll just see the same cheap, processed foods, only without meat and thus without an important and efficient source of protein. Furthermore, even if the quality of offerings improves on Meatless Mondays, shouldn’t we demand those offerings every day instead of settling for having them just one day of the week? At its best, Meatless Monday justifies the entirety of the unhealthy foods served to our children through the ultimately empty offering to health advocates of excluding meat. We should be advocating for quality food–lean and unprocessed meats, fresh fruits and vegetables–instead of singling out meat as if that’s what makes school lunches unhealthy.