Everyday it’s the same thing for a vegetarian Foothill Tech student: you zip up your backpack in a hurry and bolt out of the classroom at record speeds, almost breaking your neck several times on the treacherous racetrack to the sparse spread of meatless foods in the cafeteria – and that doesn’t even factor in hallway traffic.
It’s a struggle for sustainment in the sparsely vegetated Sahara of Foothill’s cafeteria for the herbivores. Even if there is a lone vegetable dish shriveling under the heat lamps, it’s likely that it was cooked, fried, or boiled in some sort of animal meat oil or product.
Vegetarianism can be a harsh mistress.
Currently, there are a number of local teenage vegetarians, pescetarians, and vegans that are suffering through intense critter-conscious hunger pangs due to the small quantity of dishes that they are able to eat.
Perhaps there would be enough animal-free food to feed everyone under the vegetarian umbrella if the students that eat meat as well as vegetation did not eat what little food was prepared for those who choose not to eat meat. Foothill junior and pescetarian Averi James confirms that the competition for vegetarian dishes between meat-eaters and non-meat eaters results in leaving some vegetarians without food.
“It’s sort of ridiculous that we have to wait in line and then there’s no vegetarian food,” James said, “Then all we have to eat is salad.”
Another more logical and, ultimately less confrontational, solution would be to make more of the dishes to keep up with the demand for the lettuce wraps, pepperoni-less pizza, and white rice.
This food deficiency also presents a problem financially for vegan and vegetarian juniors and seniors. Where they could spend three dollars and fifty cents on a cafeteria lunch and avoid using up gas in their car to drive to a place that is vegan or vegetarian friendly, they will probably pay at least three times that price in order to get a satisfactory meal. Not to mention that they also have to waste a decent portion of their precious lunch hour just to retrieve the food.
All is not lost, however. There is hope for progress in our vegetarian food selections in the form of teenagers such as Missouri high school student Kali Gibbs.
“I was so surprised it was so simple,” said Gibbs in an article by The Vegetarian Resource Group, referring to her successful attempt at obtaining new vegan and vegetarian meals for the school cafeteria.
“I began composing a letter to the food-service director for my school… also began a petition, and over the course of less than one week it accumulated 3 pages of signatures and e-mail addresses,” she said.
Gibbs then took the letter, signatures, and a list of some recommended food providers to the head of food services in the district. Within a month, they began serving foods that catered to more than just the carnivorous students.
However, we cannot blame the lunch ladies or the school system completely for the lack of vegetarian foods, because nowadays, it can be much easier and more economical to buy frozen meats and prepackaged meals if you don’t know where to look.
That is why organizations such as The Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG), and PETA are trying to help schools, students, and their parents institute vegan and vegetarian meal options into the cafeteria lunch menus. VRG even goes so far as to offer a step-by-step guide on how to implement these foods into cafeteria menus with relative ease on their website.
Maybe all we need to do is follow in Gibbs’ footsteps in order to further the ‘veggie’ cause at Foothill, or even the school district, but it’s possible that we may have to take this issue higher.
One thing is clear, though: if vegetarians, vegans, and pescetarians want to be able to eat a meatless lunch, we’re either going to have to petition our school district, drive to a food source, or all become Olympic sprinters.
