All-Vegetarian Meals Give Students and Animals Cause for Celebration
For Immediate Release:
March 9, 2011
Contact:
Shakira Croce 757-622-7382
New York — For offering students an all-vegetarian lunch menu, the The East Harlem School (EHS) has won a Compassionate School Award from TeachKind, PETA's humane-education division. Together with Sustainable Food Systems, LLC, the school dishes up delicious vegetarian meals—including tofu pad Thai, coconut-curry chickpeas, vegetarian tacos, and hummus and veggie sandwiches—and never serves meat in its cafeteria.
"The East Harlem School is showing its students how delicious vegetarian meals can be," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. "And given that a vegetarian diet is one of the best ways to stay healthy and protect the environment, that's an important lesson that EHS students will take with them to high school and beyond."
According to the American Dietetic Association, vegetarians are less prone to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity than meat-eaters are. Students who embrace a vegetarian diet won't just save their own health—they'll also save more than 100 animals a year from the horrors of filthy factory farms and frightening slaughterhouses. Going vegetarian is also great for the environment: A vegetarian diet helps decrease water pollution, prevents deforestation, and reduces greenhouse-gas emissions.
TeachKind offers many resources to educators, including free high-quality lesson plans and tools for teachers who are interested in implementing humane policies in their classrooms as well as discounts on interactive software to replace animal dissection. All of the program's features are free and can be ordered online at TeachKind.org.
The East Harlem School will receive a framed certificate and a letter of congratulations from PETA.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.