Vegetarian Lunch Options: What's on the Menu?

I have a variety of allergies, my most limiting one being milk. I also avoid beef and pork for a combination of ethical, environmental, and health purposes. When I was in J-school, I would regularly get the “allergy plate”; a special meal designed to fit a range of food sensitivities and dietary restrictions.The Hopkins dining hall staff always served me with kindness and care. These lunches avoided red meat, something that should be limited in Hopkins lunches overall due to the environmental, economic, and social benefits of doing so. The problem of meat in school lunches doesn’t lie in the hands of the Hopkins dining hall staff, but with school lunch culture overall. 

When it comes to my range of dietary restrictions, I know that it is my job to adapt to social settings, and not other people’s job to adapt to me. This means sometimes eating before an event, and occasionally indulging in foods that I avoid for personal reasons to be polite. It is not my prerogative to enforce my own dietary beliefs on others. I do, however, believe that it is our moral responsibility as a school to lower our greenhouse emissions. One way to do this is by reducing our consumption of red meats.

Every day, the Hopkins dining hall staff works hard to make delicious and healthy meals for our community. Daily lunches often include a main meat based entree, and a smaller vegetarian option. Mammal meat is one of the most common dietary restrictions; Halal and Kosher diets both avoid pork, as well as improperly slaughtered meats. Many Hindu people steer clear of beef or meat altogether, and mammal meats are popularly avoided for personal ethical reasons. Hopkins serves a high-demand vegetarian option, which often runs out before vegetarian students get a chance to serve themselves. Students who don’t get their preferred vegetarian meal have to adjust. There needs to be recognition of the demand that comes with non-mammal meats outside of vegetarians.

A key reason that many choose not to eat mammal meat, particularly beef, is the environmental impacts. Beef is one of the most greenhouse gas intensive foods that exist: 2.3% of greenhouse emissions come from beef production alone. This statistic can be hard to visualise, but here’s a more direct image: just one hamburger uses 2,400 liters of water. Due to high quantities of water, land, and CO2 that are necessary for beef production, limiting our red meat intake has immense environmental impacts. Furthermore, cutting out mammal meats from diets entirely can decrease one person’s overall greenhouse gas emissions by around 30%.

 In addition to the various economic and environmental benefits to not eating red meat, many health advantages exist as well. Firstly, cutting down consumption of beef lowers your LDL-cholesterol, the build up of plaque in your arteries that leads to heart attacks and stroke. 

A sugar(Neu5Gc) found in red meats (which humans lack, and is therefore seen as foreign to the immune system) causes another danger in consumption. Because this sugar is not native to the human immune system, small amounts of inflammation are caused each time it is ingested. Over time, these smaller inflammations build up to chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation can lead to increased risks for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and more. Altogether, lowering consumption of meat can lower these side effects and have positive health impacts. 

While removing meat from the Hopkins lunch altogether may be unrealistic, studies show this frequently goes unnoticed when done discreetly. In New York City public hospitals, for example, vegetarian and plant based options were offered, but not labeled differently. Patients were offered two options, and only if they declined both, would they be offered a meat meal. When this system was put in place, employees found that 51% of patients accepted a vegetarian or plant-based meal. Ultimately, this reduced NYC public hospitals carbon emissions by 36%. Hopkins could take a similar approach, such as discreetly adding in 2-3 vegetarian days a week.