Affluent Kids Get Healthy Animal-Free Lunches; Why Not All Children?

by Stephanie Ernst

categories: Activism and Actions, Food and Recipes, Politics and Law, Vegan

Published August 11, 2009 @ 08:36AM PT

We've talked about the need for healthy, humane plant-based options in schools several times on this blog (e.g., here and here). PCRM's Healthy School Lunches campaign has had a related petition on this site for a while now, in addition to elsewhere on the Web (go sign if you haven't!).

And recently, with the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act coming up in October, PCRM has stepped up its campaign, with this compelling ad placed around D.C., an ad that some find bothersome, as the Washington Post is reporting today.

The complaints of some? That this uses or goes after the president's kids, a strategy considered off-limits. But I'm with PCRM on this one. The girls aren't named. Their photos aren't used. But the fact that kids from affluent families have access to the kinds of healthy foods that less privileged kids don't is an important point that needs to be made:

Barnard says he doesn't see anything compromising or controversial about the poster, which features Jasmine Messiah standing impishly, arms crossed, in a red dress against a red background, with a clip-art-style thought bubble aligned with her left pigtail. For Barnard, juxtaposing Jasmine with Sasha and Malia was particularly important.

"The direct comparison is: You have affluent children with access to healthy foods, and disadvantaged children have the same rights to the same kinds of healthy meals as affluent kids. And we are fighting for that fairness, so we felt that making that statement as directly as we could was important."

Barnard says the majority of schools in the National School Lunch Program (which includes more than 94,000 public schools) do not offer vegetarian or vegan options, despite the fact that the American Medical Association passed a unanimous resolution in 2007 recommending that these options be made available.

I do think campaigns such as this have to be made personal. People need to see and hear from and about real kids' experiences--and about the unjustifiable discrepancies between those experiences. This isn't an abstract conversation featuring hypotheticals--it's about real kids in schools across the nation who are fed unhealthy junk every day, without even the opportunity to choose something healthier and more ethical.

So if pointing out that the children of well-off politicians have the healthy options that less advantaged kids don't--and that the government has the power and responsibility to change that--is what it takes, I'm all for it.

And in case you're wondering about the adorable young girl (a vegetarian herself) in the poster, here's the story of how her image came to be used:

As for the (literal) poster-child, Jasmine came to PCRM's attention this spring when she traveled to the District with her mother, Sarah Messiah, an epidemiologist at the University of Miami who spoke before the House and Senate on childhood obesity as part of a conference organized by PCRM. Barnard recalls that Jasmine had recently studied government in school and that she was eager to see theory in practice.

At one of these hearings, Barnard says, the 8-year-old approached the mike. "She said: 'I have something I want to say. . . . In my school, there isn't anything I can eat. There isn't anything healthy at all.' "

Barnard, inspired, got an on-hand photographer to take Jasmine's picture -- now the main image in the Metro posters.

For both health reasons and ethical reasons--there absolutely are compassionate kids who don't want to eat animals, but whose school cafeterias don't provide them with healthy alternatives (and, unfortunately, whose parents may not be supportive of their choices either, in many cases)--it is beyond time that changes be made. We're not talking about turning all school lunch programs vegan (though, naturally, I'd consider that a marvelous idea); all we're talking about is giving kids healthy vegan options. And there isn't a single good reason not to.

Learn more about the campaign here.