by Taylor Timinskas and Aesha Desai, ’18

This article is the first opinion article in a series on dining at CA – we will continue with interviews and discussions in the next edition.

There is a great variety of non-meat eaters at our school ranging from pescatarians (people who refrain from all meat except fish) and vegans (who refrain from all animal products) to pollotarians (who refrain from all meat except poultry) and vegetarians (who refrain from meat). Some individuals choose these diets for ethical and environmental reasons, and others must follow these diets due to religious or health reasons. These restrictions can make it challenging for some people to eat during lunch. As part of the Sage Dining plan at Cary Academy, we are lucky to have multiple options like the salad, sandwich, and rotating pasta bars. Even though we are offered these other vegetarian options, we still believe that more options could be served on the main bar in order to offer a variety of foods for people with these dietary restrictions. We feel it would be a great step forward to introduce a new rotation of vegetarian or vegan proteins instead of having multiple meat options. It is noticeable that sometimes during lunch, the meat options heavily outweigh the vegetarian or vegan ones.  For example, during a recent breakfast day, there were three meat options and eggs. Although we understand that eggs are vegetarian, vegans cannot eat them.

Looking to the future of Cary Academy dining, we came across a few ideas that we’d like to present to the dining staff. For alternating main bar options, we would love if there could possibly be main dishes that are either vegetarian or vegan to balance with the meat options that are generally served. There are many different options to explore such as eggplant Parmesan (V),Portobello fajitas (VG), avocado pasta (VG), veggie burgers (VG), grilled tofu (VG) and more. Any kind of protein substitute for the main meat option for the day would mean a lot to the vegetarian community at our school. In addition, we would love to have an educational vegetarian and vegan food day as a way to share healthy, environmentally friendly eating options with everyone. This could be a great opportunity to branch out and try nutrient-rich foods that most wouldn’t try without the option. We are definitely grateful for all the hard work that the staff does to make us meals that we will enjoy; however, we do believe that with these suggestions we can make the menu more inclusive to people who have certain dietary restrictions, and it would mean a lot to us to make this addition. We are excited to potentially work with Sage Dining and Cary Academy dining staff on these possible additions in this upcoming year as a way to bring light to vegetarianism within our community.