Healthy School Lunches

The New York State Legislature passed a resolution in 2004 asking school districts to offer daily vegetarian meal options to their students. The following Web sites will help with the request:

The Healthy School Lunch Campaign is sponsored by the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine and provides an annual school lunch report card.

New York Coalition for Healthy School Food has found that healthy plant based foods plus exercise equals better health (and attendance), better grades and better behavior. Read their School food 101 report.

CHOICE - Citizens for Healthy Options In Children's Education, launched by a group of concerned parents in 1994 is an excellent resource for educators, parents and kids.

Lesson plans:

To introduce students to vegetarianism, use the Vegetarian Resource Group's lesson plan.

CHOICE has a number of lesson plans to promote plant foods for grades K-3, 4-6 , 7-8, and 9-12.

Vegetarianism protects the environment, while alleviating world hunger & animal suffering:

The Vegetarian Resource Group is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public on vegetarianism and the interrelated issues of health, nutrition, ecology, ethics, and world hunger. VRG also provides food service information for schools and a vegetarian lesson plan for teachers. Vegetarianism should not only be a part of a school's health curriculum, but should be a part of a school's environmental education program too because the meat industry is so environmentally devastating - Another Inconvenient Truth: Meat is a Global Warming Issue.

Vegetarianism is humaneness. The average meat eater is responsible for the deaths of more than 100 animals each year. Animals raised for food endure great suffering in their housing, transport, feeding and slaughter. Because vegetarianism helps to alleviate world hunger, vegetarians are also humanitarians. (The Case Against Meat)

Ease into vegetarianism:

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"Thousands of people who say they 'love' animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs."— Jane Goodall

More to come ............................................

©2007-2009 Humane Education Teacher