This mother-turned-founder is taking it upon herself to build an educational curriculum for her daughter that aligns with her vegan values.
Lunches at public schools in America lack proper nutrition. This mother-turned-founder is taking it upon herself to build an educational curriculum for her daughter that aligns with her vegan values.
Maria Solanki, the founder of KING Charter Schools, a vegan K-8 in
Pinellas County, Florida, wants to become the first charter school in
America to take milk off the menu and serve its students 100% plant-based
meals—but not without a fight.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which subsidized meals
for public school students with the $13.6-billion National School Lunch and
School Breakfast programs, requires lunch programs to serve milk as part of
the new high-fat, low-veggie diet that Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue
introduced a week after his appointment in 2017.
According to Federal Register regulations, eligible school breakfast and
lunch programs “must not directly or indirectly restrict the sale or
marketing of fluid milk at any time or in any place on school premises or at
any school-sponsored event.”
KING will not be able to receive federal meal reimbursements until it makes
milk available to students. Neither will any school teaching its students
about the horrible lives dairy cows live on factory farms.
got milk?
The celebrity-backed got milk? campaign returned shortly after Perdue
announced his new nutrition standards for school meals. Beginning in 1994,
the original got milk? campaign, created by the California Milk Processing
Board, featured wide-grinned, white-mustached celebrities encouraging kids
to drink milk so they will grow up to be big and strong. Turns out, kids
don’t need milk to do that. Still, there appears to be no better way to
market a glass of milk than with a familiar face.
The infamous “Got Milk?” slogan appears in two different languages in the
latest campaign, targeting millennial families and Spanish-speakers, who
both historically drink a lot of milk. The bilingual commercial is oddly
reminiscent of the dairy industry’s recent struggles. Children stare
longingly at a glass of milk. They lament their problems, using milk to help
them get through the day.
More than 1 in 5 students in U.S. public schools are Hispanic. And oh,
they’ve got milk. The National Lunch Program currently provides each
student, regardless of health, race, or dietary requirements, with dairy
milk twice a day every day. Obviously, it’s up to the kids whether or not
they drink it. As recently as 2010, school lunchrooms were required to give
students water. For decades, the only beverage kids were routinely offered
was milk.
In September, the American Medical Association (AMA) released a memo
instructing the USDA to change its nutritional standards for 2020. The
standards recommend students drink two cartons of milk every day, with the
option of yogurt for breakfast and a cheese stick for lunch. The AMA fired
back, citing heightened levels of lactose intolerance in African Americans
and Asians and calling for a movement away from dairy in school lunch
programs.
The healthier, vegan option
Solanki believes going vegan at school will help students maintain healthy,
happy lives at home. “With proper nutritionists to help build out our school
menus, the students will by no means be lacking in nutrition,” she writes on
the GoFundMe page for KING Charter Schools.
The current lunch program’s nutritional standards are a marked change from
Obama-era dietary recommendations. In 2010, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids
Act directed the USDA to rewrite its nutritional standards for the first
time in 15 years to include more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. It
also gave schools more money if they met the new nutrition standards.
Chocolate milk, considered a staple of American lunchrooms, had to be
fat-free and cheese on cheeseburgers needed to be low in sodium. Dairy
producers saw this as an attack on dairy.
Dairy farmers are dumping out milk by the hundreds of millions of gallons,
and the USDA is trying to rescue them by force-feeding public school kids
dairy.
“We know how harmful it is for kids to be drinking milk,” Solanki told
VegNews. The high fat content in milk and other animal products is a large
contributor to obesity, heart problems, high cholesterol, and high blood
pressure. Yet, high-fat and processed foods like chocolate milk, white
bread, and pizza show up on school menus—where many of America’s 30 million
public school kids eat two out of three meals every day.
“I wouldn’t be as big as I am today without chocolate milk,” Perdue told
Bloomberg. It’s unclear whether he was talking about his ties to the dairy
industry or his potbelly, but there’s no doubt someone in that room full of
reporters laughed. Perdue made his name selling grain to livestock farmers
and consulting for the $200-billion U.S. dairy industry, which has been in
crisis for the past 10 years, due in large part to the success of
plant-based milk.
The dairy market followed suit, plummeting $1.1 billion this past year,
while the plant-based milk market passed $1.6 billion (+9%) in annual sales.
Plant-based milk now comprises 13% of total milk sales.
Solanki says the worst part about applying for federal meal reimbursement is
that the USDA refers to plant-based milk as a beverage, not as milk. Because
the nutritional value of plant-based milk is closer to dairy milk than a
regular “beverage,” plant-based milk simply doesn’t fit into the USDA’s
current standards, making it essentially impossible for plant-based milk to
get coverage in school lunch programs.
“The school is not required to take the reimbursement,” said Solanki, “but
by denying it, we take the risk of falling into debt.”
Starting a school is tough. Here’s what you can do to help.
Solanki is currently petitioning the USDA to change the cow’s milk
requirement for the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs. But
she may be up against Goliath. For the record, milk hasn’t moved off public
school menus since the meal program was introduced by President Harry Truman
in 1946.
Later this year, all U.S. public schools will begin expanding their milk
options, offering low-fat chocolate and strawberry-flavored milk starting in
July. The USDA has yet to make a comment on plant-based beverages–by the
books, the healthiest and only vegan option–for public schools. But the
marketing campaigns and industry-speak may be enough to convince Solanki
that her plant-based lunchroom won’t be getting federal funding anytime
soon.
That’s okay, she says. “Starting our own school, no matter how small we
start, is the first step to creating the change we want.”
KING Charter Schools is currently ACCEPTING DONATIONS to help cover the cost of its plant-based food program.
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