Bmore Meatless

The Baltimore Public School System is leading the way on Meatless Mondays but in the process it's taking a beating from the meat industrial complex and publications like as Pork Magazine (I guess there's a magazine for everything!).

From The Atlantic...

The Meatless Mondays program was launched to reduce the cholesterol and saturated fats in the lunch offerings and introduce alternate proteins and vegetables. (It's also helped the cash-strapped school district cut some costs.) Geraci and chef/dietician Mellissa Mahoney say they don't want to promote vegetarianism, just healthy omnivorism. On Mondays, beans and cheese are the main source of protein (along with vegetables and grains) and kids don't lose out on a single gram.

But the American Meat Institute, along with the Animal Agriculture Alliance, the Missouri Beef Council, and the editors of Pork Magazine, were unsurprisingly unhappy with the plan, and went to the press themselves.

The Baltimore Sun reported that the Animal Agriculture Alliance has implored citizens "shocked" by Meatless Mondays to contact Alonso "to ensure this effort does not spread."

When I was in Baltimore last Monday, I visited a grade school in West Baltimore, to find out how students are responding. A handful of sixth graders were excited about the change. Dajana Mills, 12, told me she looked forward to finding out what the Meatless Monday entrée would be every week. "It gives us a chance to pick different stuff instead of meat," she told me. She's tried new vegetables like eggplant and "white stuff," which we eventually determined to be cauliflower. When I asked her friend Shane Garey if he thought Meatless Mondays was more healthy, he responded, "Yeah, it has less calories."

With obesity rates at all time highs and the environment taking a beating from industrialized meat production how can anyone be opposed to this?