OAK PARK, Mich. (WXYZ) — Oak Park Schools is trying something new in 2025 for students eating lunch in the cafeteria – Meatless Monday. Every cafeteria in the district will be serving plant-based meals on Monday.
See the full story in the video below
Austin Jackson, the food service director, told us what was on the menu the Monday we visited Einstein Elementary.
"We have the mashed potato bowl, which is mashed potatoes, corn, chicken nuggets, the second option we have a vegetarian pizza and then we also have a vegetarian lasagna today," Jackson said.
He told us that some kids love it, while some kids choose not to eat it.
"I have noticed the more we give it to them, the more they start to enjoy it," Jackson said.
Fifth grader Justin Setevenson told me he's always open-minded with the food.
"It's really tasty and I love how they put the corn in the mashed potatoes. I haven't really tasted this yet," he said, before trying it. "It tastes really good."
Justin is one of the students who put the district's new vegan options to the test as part of their pliot plant-based program.
Many of the students are trying vegan food for the first time.
"It was fun and I got to try different stuff," Promise Dillapree-Little, a fifth grader, told me. "It was actually pretty good for the first time I did it."
It's the kind of honesty that project consultant Asha Elroy said they were looking for.
"We started with five taste tests where we took two focus groups of 4 and 5th-grade students. We tried about four to five different recipes per taste test to see what the students liked and what they didn't like," Elroy said. "What we needed to go back to the drawing board, scrap and come back to the students and making sure they were voting on a dish with an 80-plus percent approval rating that they liked and that they would continue to eat in the next school year."
Their top picks are now options across the district's elementary and secondary schools for Meatless Mondays, thanks in part to a $250,000 Department of Education grant.
"So we were one of the winners along with Kentwood School District, but our superintendent, plant-based is very near and dear to his heart, the students are very near and dear to his heart as well," Tiffany Cavill, the director of operations for Oak Park Schools, said.
The program encourages healthy eating habits and engages students in hands-on learning about nutrition and communtiy.
"It's been really great to see our students be involved in a project that not only empowered them to have input into what they're eating but also healthy options to what they're eating," Sarah Provenzola, the principal at Einstein Elementary, said.
It also paves the way for other school districts to use what they've learned and create a program of their own.
