NYC School First to Offer Vegetarian Lunch Menu

The Active Learning Elementary School in Queens, NY is making headlines for recently replacing meat products in its lunch line with healthier, protein-packed options such as tofu, falafel, and black bean quesadillas. The pre-Kindergarten through third-grade school offers the meat-free meals to its 400 students, and hopes other institutions will follow suit. With the help of health nonprofit New York Coalition for Healthy School Food, the public school created veggie-centric recipes that include organic tofu roasted with cacciatore sauce and spinach wraps with cucumber salad. In the preliminary stages of testing out meat-free options, school administrators noticed the students were drawn to and enjoyed the vegetarian entrées, serving as the final push for the cafeteria to go completely veg.