This school salad is so vegetarian friendly that it's got chicken in it.
In addition, DeKalb county schools has been selected one of the top five most vegetarian-friendly school districts in the nation (press release). Speaking as a vegetarian who has been in this district since 7th grade, I can safely say that this is bullshit.
Dr. Joyce R. Wimberly, the district’s School Nutrition Director, has introduced an array of delicious vegetarian selections, including veggie burgers and vegetarian tacos.
Ignoring the fact that “delicious” is a straight up PR lie, I have never seen a veggie burger at the school, nor vegetarian tacos. Vegetarian options at Druid Hills are limited to whatever cheese-and-ground-beef concoction served that day, minus the ground beef. And we are not, though the press release calls us members of the “vegan elite,” remotely vegan-friendly: the school lunches (at least at Druid Hills) runneth over with cheese products, and not a single menu offering for this week was vegan.
Even the salads aren’t vegetarian-friendly: They’ve all got chicken in them.
And it’s not that the school simply has too small of a vegetarian population to make this worthwhile. There’s a large vegetarian Hindu population, as well as non-religious vegetarians like me. Almost all of the vegetarians I know bring their lunch because the school lunches are unhealthy and full of meat, and stale tortilla chips and bread get boring after a while.
According to the lunch menu for this week, we had veggie lasagna on Tuesday (it had meat in it, from what we could tell), veggie burgers on Wednesday (again, they looked like meat), no veggie option today, and–something to look forward to–a totally non-vegan (and unhealthy) option of cheese fries tomorrow.
If DeKalb County wants to actually earn its designation as vegetarian-friendly, they can start supplying actual vegetarian salads, clearly marking non-meat burgers, and offering cheeseless entries (which, if they don’t want us to keel over of heart disease, they should be doing anyway–this week’s lunches have an average caloric value of 902 calories). Until then, I think the school district’s lunches can be considered vegetarian-apathetic at best.
