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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think OP has a good point, if only for environmental reasons.[/quote]

You and OP get to make that choice for you and your families.  You don't get to make that choice for other families.

And while it sounds like a good point for environmental reasons, it is bad for many other reasons.  First, the vast majority, over 90% of the population is omnivorous, not herbivorous and doesn't want or like a vegetarian diet alone.  Second, there is a supply chain issue even predating the pandemic.  It is virtually impossible to scale vegetarian food production to the scale necessary to feed the number of children that the US school population feeds to today.  Today's food production is based around consumption.  There is a large meat industry that is built around providing food for the number of people necessary.  The produce industry and the vegetarian protein industries are not built to scale to provide that much food.  It's also not cost effective.  Produce can be produced for a reasonable cost, but it doesn't scale upwards well.  In order to scale upwards, you need to have enough arable land and frankly, real estate in appropriate climates that will give you sufficient arable land with a long enough growing season to make it cost effective is too expensive.  You aren't going to be able to scale upwards without buying land that is more expensive due to other real estate demands (like housing and other commercial purposes).  Finally, the current food production includes government assistance for various industries.  If you change the menus to vegetarian or vegan foods, you'll upset certain parts of the economy and subdisidies and government purchase programs that help to sustain certain industries.  There are very powerful lobbyist groups that have a lot invested in maintaining the status quo.

All in all, this concept of converting school mean programs to vegetarian is like Don Quixote's tilting at windmills.  The windmill is going to strike back and hit poor Quixote on the head multiple times.

You might be able to do this on a small scale, like one school district or a handful of schools, but you're not going to get it even state-wide anywhere, let alone nationally.[/quote]

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