Stringer 2013

By Bao Ong

Cafeteria offerings on Monday in the city’s public schools included turkey-bacon strips, hamburger patties and teriyaki chicken. But if a national effort being pushed locally by Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, gains traction here, students may find themselves starting the week with more garbanzo beans, green peas and eggplant.

Last week, Mr. Stringer released a report called “FoodNYC: A Blueprint for a Sustainable Food System” that advocated a range of plans, from planting a garden at City Hall to reducing food waste. One proposal in the report, a product of a city “Food and Climate Summit” held at New York University in December, is that the city’s schools institute a “Meatless Monday” program.

The goal isn’t to ban meat or promote vegetarianism, said the diet-conscious Mr. Stringer, who edited the “Go Green East Harlem Cookbook,” published in 2008, but to send a message about the health benefits of eating more vegetables and less meat.

“The way to get to kids is to raise the flag: ‘Give up meat one day a week. I’m not going to have Burger King or McDonald’s for one day,’” Mr. Stringer said. “You’ve got to reach the next generation of New Yorkers early.”

Baltimore’s schools started going meatless on Mondays this year, with the encouragement of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an organization called the Monday Campaigns, which promotes health initiatives rooted on the first day of the workweek because research shows that they are more likely to stick.

Officials at the New York City Department of Education said Monday that they were reviewing Mr. Stringer’s proposal. Margie Feinberg, a department spokeswoman, said that the system’s chefs and nutritionists always keep vegetarian options in mind and noted that the schools serve pizza on whole-wheat crust every Friday to provide a more healthful option.

Meatless meals tend to be lower in saturated fat (though cheese is not exactly an artery-clearer), and Mr. Stringer said that one in five kindergarten students in New York is considered obese, which puts them at greater risk for diabetes, heart disease, asthma and depression.

In Baltimore City County Public Schools, meatless Monday has turned out to be the most popular day of the week, with black bean nachos and eggplant parmesan gaining loyal followings, said Tony Geraci, the district’s food and nutrition services director. He said that meatless Monday meals cost about 20 cents less than lunches with meat, leaving him more to spend on better local and fresh ingredients the rest of the week.

“There’s not a culture on the planet that doesn’t have vegetarian offerings,” Mr. Geraci said. “This is not rocket science stuff. You just have to remember to make it taste good.”

From New York Times-City Room