Vegan Fridays: NYC Public Schools Will Have Plant-based School Lunches Every Friday

Kids attending public schools in New York City will get to eat plant-based options for their school lunch once a week after Mayor Eric Adams launched the new initiative, Vegan Fridays.

For their very first Vegan Friday meal on Friday, February 5, NYC Public Schools on Twitter re-shared a photo of the vegan veggie tacos with tortilla, salsa, broccoli, carrots, and lemon. Fox News reported that the kids might expect other plant-based meals like a Mediterranean chickpea dish with either pasta or rice and plantain and black bean bowl in the coming weeks. All meals served to the kids undergo taste tests among a small group of students before offering the food at school cafeterias.

Vegan Fridays will complement the Meatless Mondays school lunch initiative, introduced in New York City public schools in 2019, and Meatless Fridays, which started last April 2021.

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Improving the Children's Health

New York City public schools cover 1,700 institutions with nearly 940,000 students. It is one of the largest school districts in the U.S.

Its newly-elected mayor told the press that he wanted to improve the health of the city kids after adopting the vegan diet himself in 2016 to overcome his diabetes. Mayor Adams emphasized that he wanted to bring the city in a healthier direction, especially during the pandemic, and indicated that more nutritious foods should also be offered in public healthcare facilities and prisons.

The mayor is open to discussing other healthier school lunch options, especially after data from 2019 showed that 40 percent of kids in K-8 are either overweight or obese.

A spokesperson from Adams' office told Eater that they had asked the students, principals, and parents for feedback about the first Vegan Friday school lunch. Some of the children said that the meals were not appetizing, as with any other typical school lunch.

Katie Wilkins, who is in sixth grade, said that the tacos were, in fact, burritos that were "smooshed down." The child also said that there was cheese in the meal, which means it's not vegan. She checked the ingredients at the back of the package, and it had milk in it.

Meanwhile, the plant-based options are not a strict requirement as the kids can still request peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, milk, pretzels, or hummus.

Updated Nutrition Standards from the USDA

It comes as the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that the school nutrition standards would be updated for the next two school years to help kids recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. This will also give schools enough time to gradually transition "toward more nutritious meals" that are "consistent with the latest nutrition science."

The updated standards will include more than 80 percent more whole grains and more non-fat and low-fat milk. The school lunch options' sodium content will also decreased by 10 percent.

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