Meatless Mondays in Baltimore school

To save money and promote healthy eating, Baltimore schools have started Meatless Monday. Students don't care, parents think it's a good idea, the school obviously likes it... who's upset? American Meat Institute. Surprise surprise. They claim that it's indoctrination. What about being indoctrinated to eat meat? Damn double standards.

The American Meat Institute says that children should not be forced to use to eat meat every day but that parents and children should have a choice. Um... parents don't have any say in what is served at school and usually in elementary and middle schools you have a hot option, maybe a salad bar and some junk snack type foods. Yup loads of choices. Even high schools don't have that many options in some places. Also in all honesty most kids aren't going to pick the healthy, vegetarian option if it were available when they have all the awesome tasting junk foods right next to it. What about the veg*n children who don't have any choice at all?

And of course the American Meat Institute wants to throw out the outrageous "statistic" of 75% of children don't eat enough protein. How the hell is that POSSIBLE?! Maybe they mean animal protein but there's really no difference nutritional wise (besides the health problems that excess animal protein brings).

With the menu they showed they would be no issue with protein. They have the choice between grilled cheese (37g, mostly because of the cheese) or vegetarian chili (12g if it's just beans). They also have corn (5g), green beans (2g) ,refried beans (13g without lard), fruit.* A 100lb 12 year old needs 45.5g of protein a day. If this 12 year old picks the grilled cheese, corn and refried beans that's 55g right there, for one meal. The kids are fine.

I don't want to believe that the meat industry is actually throwing a fit about this but I'm not surprised. While the school is saving money, the meat industry is losing it. Imagine how much one school pays for meat to feed its students for one day. Depending on the size of the school that is a pretty good profit to the companies selling the meat. Yeah I'm sure they are upset about it but to come and use scare tactics because a school district is feeding kids meat one less day out of the week is pretty pathetic. Be glad that they are buying your dead animals the other 4 days of the week and get over it.

*I pulled those numbers from NutritionalData.com and the actual amount of protein the kids are getting will vary a bit depending on how it was cooked and how much the kids actually eat. But it's the basic idea.