Sometimes, when you're contemplating the chilly embrace of the grave, life hands you a red lentil. In sunny California, land of the perennially upbeat, schools have started chucking weirdly wholesome vegan meals at their unsuspecting kids. Just ponder on the cycle of life that cilantro undergoes just to end its journey in a histamine-triggering school taco.
Take Erin, a faceless bureaucrat with over a decade in battle against bland cafeteria slop. Her revolution? Swapping mystery meat for farmer's markets in a tote bag. The students plant, eat, and then question the earthly value of the newly discovered food facts. "Corn has a husk?" one student allegedly mumbled; this is groundbreaking after a pre-meal Google search confirmed their ephemeral existence on this doomed orb.
Erin sells schools on this green grub gospel by promising it’ll prevent food waste—because, let's face it, anything is tasty when you haven’t perused the abyss of a processed beef patty. She throws words like ‘respect our system’ into the ether, which, considering my daily contemplation of slipping quietly into the void, almost made me exalt lentils.
For some unfathomable reason, Californian kids are gobbling up this red lentil dal like there's no tomorrow (and if my contemplations hold any existential weight, there really might not be). Erin predicts this vegan sorcery will be a full-time gig on the food calendar, presumably until the sun explodes or I finally crack, whichever comes first.
Vegan menus in schools—could it be a plot to develop an army of enlightened, garden-tending youths? Or merely another punchline in the grand cosmic joke, leaving us to dine alone in the universe, ideally with a side of coconut rice?
After all, as I edge closer to my inevitable demise, I like to think death is the universe's greatest vegan meal—no meat, just the infinite, cold embrace of oblivion. And really, isn’t that the ultimate form of going green?
Based on the original article "California Is Flooding School Cafeterias With Vegan Meals—and Kids Like It".
