Students – You can make a difference!
There are so many different ways to get involved, and below are just a few. If you want to run an idea past us, just give us a call (contact information on the Contact page). You can advocate for healthier food and the more students that do it, the better the chance that you’ll be successful. Many adults think that students don’t want to eat healthy foods, and that might be true for some, but not all! Of course, if the food doesn’t look and taste great, who’s going to want to eat it? So working with your School’s Food Service Director to try different recipes before they put them on the menu is a great strategy. Then, build excitement by creating a promotional campaign with posters, announcements, contests, tastings, and whatever else you can think of. Doing educational presentations for your classmates and other classes can help other students learn why getting healthier food on the menu is so important. Letting the Food Service Director know that you have their back will make a difference. But first, learn about strategizing to create change in your school! Understanding how school food works will help you be better at making suggestions for change.
What’s in healthier eating for you? Better health, getting sick less often, being able to focus better (and that means doing better in school), having a better mood (yes, food is related to mood – our brains and bodies need the proper nutrients to function properly), being constipated less often, reducing climate change (this is huge, your future depends on it!), and it’s kinder to animals. So go ahead, challenge yourself!
Create Recipes for your Cafeteria
At home, in Family & Consumer Sciences Classes (in middle school), or in After School Cooking Classes, develop recipes that can be used on the cafeteria menu. You can get the details here for how to submit a recipe. You can also contact us for more information.
Promote Healthy Foods
Are there already healthy foods on your school menu? Ask to help do a taste testing, get together with friends to create posters about the reasons to eat healthy in the cafeteria. Teach a class. Do it for your health! Do it to address Climate Change. Do it because it’s Kinder to Animals! You can make a difference!!!
Help the Environment
Did you know that eating a plant-based diet (or at least eating that way more often) is the #1 biggest thing you can do to help the environment and do something about climate change? Animal agriculture contributes more to climate change than all transportation combined. You can do more by eating one veggie burger a week instead of a beef burger than practically all the other things you could do to help the environment put together. Learn more about food and climate change here and here.
Help Animals
It’s pretty obvious that when we eat animals they suffer. Whether it’s to get milk or eggs, or whether eating meat, fish, or seafood, the animals suffer, and they die. By eating fewer animals, or no animals, we cause fewer animals to suffer, and that’s a good thing. There’s a big disconnect in this world, because if people did the things they do to the animals raised for food to their pets, they’d get in big trouble. And cows, chickens, pigs, and fish all suffer just the same way our dogs and cats do.
Write a Report
Have a report to write? Why not make it about healthy plant-based foods and how they can help our health, the environment, and animals? Contact us if you need ideas!
Books & Videos
There is so much to read and so much to watch to learn more about plant-based nutrition and the reasons for eating a more plant-based diet: