Some New York City schools are going meatless on Mondays next year, but not everyone in The Big Apple favors the approach.
Beginning in the spring, 15 public schools in Brooklyn will no longer serve meat with lunches on Mondays. The idea is to promote a healthier lifestyle and help the planet. A growing argument among environmental groups and other organizations is that processing cattle causes pollution, takes up water resources, and uses land that could be devoted to crops.
“Even if you had a bacon, egg, and cheese this morning, you still should want to see more and more of our diets go to a plant-based approach,” NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said Mondayin a visit to a public school already offering vegetarian lunches. “It’s good for everyone.”
“I think we start going down a slippery slope when we go from feeding children to expanding the school lunch program to now deciding what kids will eat, and the campaign has been mired with misinformation,” responds Jeff Stier, a New Yorker working for The National Center for Public Policy Research. “What they’ve done is they’ve played a bit of a shell game. They said, ‘Well, we’re going to have meatless Mondays because we think kids should eat more vegetables.’ Any nutritionist would laugh at that because one has nothing to do with the other.”
Stier does agree that children should be eating more vegetables, and he says when schools provide lunches, they should be providing fresh produce to kids.
“That has nothing to do with the ideologically-driven campaign to discourage kids from getting their protein through meat,” he continues. “Meat is an excellent and healthy source of protein, and I think kids should have the option of eating vegetarian every day of the week, and kids should have access to meat when we give them their school lunches. The two are not mutually exclusive.”
And while Mayor de Blasio and other New Yorkers may beg to differ, Stier adds there is no science to support the idea that meat is responsible for our environmental concerns.
“School should be the place where are teaching our kids, not indoctrinating them,” he concludes.
—-
Copyright American Family News. Reprinted with permission.
Recent Comments