Parents object to vegetarian-only cafeterias, says children go home hungry.
Children come home hungry
Parents are furious over the food being served in the school cafeteria, and their children are avoiding the vegetarian-only policy, which makes them very hungry after school.
Having schools serving vegetarian-only meals is quite rare, but it is starting to grow popularity recently. The reason behind this is that meat-free meals contribute to a lesser carbon footprint, which environmental advocates are encouraging right now.
For some schools, they adapt to child-friendly vegetarian meals such that the food may still be appealing to the students. They try to avoid serving quinoa and courgettes, which is commonly disliked by students.
A school in Oxford once hit the news headlines after angry parents claimed that their children come home hungry because the school cafeteria suddenly served vegetarian-only meals at lunchtime.
Vegetarian-only cafeterias promote environment-awareness
Kay Wood, head of school for the Swan school in Oxford, discussed the vegetarian policy at their school. It is said to promote students and teachers with different food preferences to eat similar meals together and reduce harmful impacts on the environment.
As we can see from the younger generations nowadays, they are getting environmentally aware. This is just a simple way to support the advocacy leaned towards sustainability.
But schools are also starting to consider that if they continue to push their ways to their students in eating vegetarian foods only, then a lot of food shall go into waste.
We recognized the kinds of food that children don’t eat. We do not want them to starve and not have the right nutrition because of not eating, and also, we want to limit the amount of food put into waste for not patronizing cafeteria food.
As a win-win solution, schools are now serving minimal meat products accompanied by appealing veggies. According to Rob Percival from the Food and Health policy at Soil Association, schools should be serving less but better meat.
Reduced meat serving accompanied by plant proteins will be much more effective in cost efficiency and adhering to environmental factors.
