Friday, February 18, 2011

Meatless Mondays At Schools

If you've been following local food news, you know that our schools are working -- slowly, but surely -- to improve the nutritive value of school lunches. With the urging of the Children's Health Collaborative, a local group of parents, pediatricians, and school officials, the school lunch program is trying a few new things.

Recently, Del Norte schools had their first Meatless Monday, a vegetarian lunch that follows a national trend. As NPR reported last summer, Sid Lerner is trying to market Meatless Mondays as a way for all Americans to cut back on saturated fats and cholesterol found in animal products. It can also be easier on the pocketbook, one reason that the Smith River senior lunch program has been serving meatless lunches on Mondays since early last summer.


Sid Lerner is a veteran ad-man -- he brought the world the Charmin-squeezing shoppers who were harangued with "Don't squeeze the Charmin!" So it is no wonder that he is using smart marketing to spread the word about Meatless Mondays. The website features lots of reasons to go meatless and news about the campaign. It's also the source for the playful posters designed by Lerner's team that will be showing up in the halls at DN High School.

What do you think? Should our schools embrace this trend? Do you participate in Meatless Mondays or would you consider participating?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm so happy to hear that DN High is doing Meatless Mondays. Our family has been doing Meatless Mondays (and sometimes Meatless Wednesdays, or Fridays, or Sundays...) as a way to save money and eat healthy. We have found so many wonderful vegetarian recipes that we don't miss the meat--and the smaller grocery bills are nice too!

Growing Tables Admin said...

I think everyone likes smaller grocery bills! We'll have to have a recipe round-up at some point.

JoeGi said...

This could evolve into something wonderful for our community, so thank you for your efforts! As recent world events portray, this kind of communication/collaboration via internet can facilitate rapid change,and we should know that change is what we must embrace as we work to create a more sustainable lifestyle, community, and economy.
Today with some of my students we explored "sustainable living" by typing that into google to see what others are doing. I encourage you to do the same. One good site I found with discussions of school lunches is a great sited from the Center For Ecoliteracy, at www.ecoliteracy.org. I invite you to take a look.
I look forward to my students contributing to your blog. Thanks again. Joe

Growing Tables Admin said...

We would love some student contributions, Joe, so let's plan to include them on a regular basis.

If you're still looking for sustainable living web resources, there's a wonderful blog co-op (http://simple-green-frugal-co-op.blogspot.com/) that features writers from several parts of the world trying to live more sustainably.