Healthier School Lunches – Good Idea – Peer Pressure – Not So Good
A nutritionally balanced, vegetarian salad - and really good too!
I just read a blog post on the U.S. News and World Report site discussing a letter that had been sent to the Obama sisters by Montel Williams’ daughter, Wyntergrace. In this letter, Wyntergrace discusses her choice to become vegetarian, and how she is on a campaign to get vegetarian options on school lunch menus. She invites Sasha and Malia to sign a petition to Congress requesting a move to healthier lunches.
Wyntergrace has been a vegetarian since she was 10, despite her parents’ omnivore meals. I suppose that now, at the ripe age of 14, she’s decided to use her dad’s celebrity, to bring other celebrity kids in on her cause. She recommends vegetarianism for a number of reasons including compassion for the animals, environmental, and health reasons. She also claims that a number of her friends don’t eat school lunches because of the fat and sugar.
Part of me wants to applaud her activism in a cause that she feels strongly about. Encouraging schools to offer a healthier selection than the greasy food du jour is great. More fresh options would be terrific.
Here’s what’s bugging me. I’m a little concerned with this celebrity promotion of vegetarianism. If this movement were to be picked up by Malia and Sasha, how many kids would just jump on the band wagon because it was cool? And how many kids wouldn’t eat a balanced diet because they think being vegetarian means eating only lettuce, or potato chips, or cookies? Kids will blindly follow their peers, and may not be eating any healthier just because they’re vegetarian. After all, how many kids do you know who choose to eat vegetables? I know of one 10 year old vegetarian, and I can report that she is still a picky eater, but meat is not in her limited menu of choices and neither are beans, as far as I can tell. A growing child who chooses to be a vegetarian needs to be very careful to get the nutrition necessary for brain and physical development. They either need the support and backing of their parents, or to read up on it themselves.
Finally, I could see, at least in these private schools attended by Wyntergrace, Malia, and Sasha, peer pressure building to be vegetarian. I can see the possibility of kids mocked for choosing to be omnivores because the cool, celebrity kids have led their blind followers to despising meat. And that’s neither cool, nor necessarily healthy for growing bodies.
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