Education News – Grace Smith
“Another elementary school in New York City has decided to go with a vegetarian menu for student lunches, and other schools nationwide are paying attention to the experiment. The first school to do so was a public elementary school in Flushing, Queens. Now, the Peck Slip School in lower Manhattan will be serving only plant-based foods in order to support their students’ health as well as for the environment. Natalia Lima of Ecorazzi says that these two schools are the only non-charter schools in the US to have made this switch to vegetarian. The Coalition for Healthy School Food (CHSF), a non-profit organization focused on getting whole foods into schools across New York City’s boroughs, was instrumental in the schools making the change…The CHSF group’s executive director Amie Hamlin noted that many schools are asking for menus to lower their students’ BMIs, promote better health, reduce the number of sick days, and to increase students’ concentration. After implementing vegetarian menus in January of 2013, the school was able to report improved test scores and longer attention spans by students within nine months.”(more)