This comes to us from www.meatlessmonday.com, a non-profit initiative in association with the Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health.Now if we could just get healthy, organic meatless options available everyday. I know that we cannot eliminate the meat(yet...), but students who would like to go meatless, should have the option. It is a start though!
The Baltimore City Public School system is about to become the first fully Meatless Monday school system in the U.S. They’re joining a growing international movement of individuals, organizations, communities and cities making the commitment to lower meat consumption and enjoy a plant-based diet on Mondays.
The 80,000 young people BCPS serves will begin each week with a Meatless Monday menu. And that’s not all. The school system has introduced a wide variety of projects to ensure its students eat and learn about healthy, environmentally friendly choices. BCPS has teemed up with local farmers and distributors to provide students fresh, locally raised fruits, vegetables and milk. They’ve also introduced Great Kids Farm, a 33-acre teaching farm, home to chickens, goats and a variety of fruits and vegetables. Educators on the farm teach kids and adults how to produce home-grown fresh food, even in an urban setting. BCPS is also in the process of developing gardens for each of the system’s 200 schools.
We at Meatless Monday hope the example BCPS is setting will help inspire the nation and serve as a model to transform school food systems coast to coast.
Milk. It's hard to even think of the word without conjuring up an image of a cow in your mind. But why? All mammals produce milk for their offspring. Bears, raccoons, monkeys, squirrels, rats, kangaroos, bats, lions, elephants, whales, groundhogs, and even humans lactate for their young. What makes milk from a cow any different? Why don't we drink fox milk?
Like humans and other mammals, cows must be pregnant in order to "give" milk. Cows don't actually "give" their milk, we take it. It's almost comical that despite knowing that pregnant mammals supply milk for their offspring, we tend to forget that cows also need to be pregnant to produce their mammary secretions. After years of successful marketing, lobbying, and infiltrating, the Dairy Council truly has brainwashed us into believing that milk from cows is not only "natural," but some sort of free-flowing substance that cows readily "give" us.
Once we come to realize that cows produce milk for their offspring, we then have to ask ourselves, why are we drinking it? Not only are we drinking it during infancy, but throughout our entire lives. So, although we know breast milk is normal and natural for babies, we somehow tend not to ask any questions about drinking milk from a cow past infancy. Even during infancy, milk from a cow is milk for a cow, right? Why is it that we are appalled at consuming the milk of a wolf, or even the milk from our own species after infancy, but when it is that of a cow we don't even question it? What's normal or natural about consuming mammary secretions of another species and continuing to consume it into adulthood?
Milk is a very politically charged industry. The Dairy Council has achieved great success through the years in convincing the public that "milk" refers to that of a cow and that we should be consuming it to be healthy. The Dairy Council is even one of the largest sponsors of the American Dietetic Association which gives them access to key individuals who develop nutrition guidelines and inform nutrition professionals. How can an association that is supposed to be based on unbiased scientific information accept donations from industries with commercial interests? And how is it that milk and dairy products became a "food group?" It just seems like the more you step back and analyze the situation, the less sense it makes.
We are told we need milk to be healthy, but who is telling us that? And why are people in countries, such as China, who consume little or no dairy products in completely fine health? Why is it that the WHO (World Health Organization) only recommends about half the amount of calcium daily that the USDA recommends? Why is it that we aren't being told that milk from cows is one of the least efficient sources of calcium as far as bioavailability is concerned? Why is it that we aren't being told that drinking milk can cause iron-deficiency anemia?
World Health Organization recommendations for preventing osteoporosis acknowledge this “calcium paradox.” The agency advises that individuals 50 years of age or older from countries with a high fracture incidence only consume a minimum of 400–500 mg of calcium daily, far less than the current—and inflated—U.S. government recommendations, which range from 800 to 1,300 mg of calcium daily for all ages. -PCRM
An iron-poor diet is a common cause of iron deficiency. Drinking too much cow's milk is a common cause of iron deficiency in young children because cow’s milk contains little iron and can get in the way of iron absorption. Cow's milk also can cause problems in the intestine that lead to blood loss and increased risk of anemia. -NIH
The more you look, the more answered questions you will find. And the more you find, the more you realize how absurd the idea of consuming milk from a cow really is. This article merely scratched the surface and didn't even discuss ethical issues like the disposal of baby calves (veal and leather), or the various health implications of consuming dairy products. Still not convinced? Do a little research and see for yourself, then you decide how natural milk really is.
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The Baltimore City Public School system is about to become the first fully Meatless Monday school system in the U.S. They’re joining a growing international movement of individuals, organizations, communities and cities making the commitment to lower meat consumption and enjoy a plant-based diet on Mondays.
