Picture this: you walk out of a long math class, excited because you heard that the cafeteria is serving meatballs. You run to the lunch line, pushing yourself through a sea of students, only to see that what you thought was a meatball is nothing but a ball of seaweed.
Meatless Monday was implemented in the high school in March of 2022 by the Warriors for Animal Rights Club. The goal of the global movement is to minimize impact on the environment by reducing meat consumption. However, although the high school’s adherence to Meatless Monday helps the environment, it comes at a cost to the students.
As someone who eats the school lunch on a daily basis, I look forward to seeing the options. I love seeing different types of food such as pizza, pasta and sandwiches in the cafeteria. The one common element that makes all these foods so special is meat: the pizza has pepperoni; the pasta has ground beef; and the panini has salami, ham or turkey; the meat makes school lunches. So I am more than disappointed when I come back to school on Monday and see only meatless options. Meatless Monday is forced on students, and what’s more, the options aren’t good. As a school, we are able to do better and should do better.
If we are going to keep Meatless Monday, let’s improve the meals. Let’s not take foods where the main ingredient is meat and replace them with a weak vegetarian substitute. Take kelp meatballs, for example: why call it a “meatball” if the one thing that makes it a meatball is gone? Also, how does one make “chickenless chicken”? When I saw chickenless chicken in our cafeteria for the first time, it looked like life had been sucked right out of it. It disgusted me to my core, and I was shaken for the whole week.
Instead, Meatless Mondays should focus on foods that never relied on meat in the first place, such as pho, rice dishes, or pasta without “meat” sauce. We can eat these foods as they are, without adding kelp meatballs, plant-based pasta sauce or plant-based chicken on top.
As a student body, we have the power to change things about our school. The fact that Meatless Monday was originally implemented by a group of students shows that we can also join together as a student body to get rid of it. We can start conversations around environmentalism and take unified action for environmental initiatives within the high school, such as ensuring lunch waste is properly separated and increasing involvement in the Indoor Farm. There are many ways the high school can reduce its impact on the environment that don’t involve eating fake meat every Monday.
Although Meatless Monday is good for the environment, it is not a suitable lunch option for hungry students. Meatless Monday has run its course in our school, and it’s time for a change. As a student body, we must join together to get rid of fake meat every Monday once and for all.
