Plant-forward Schools
PETA has something called the ‘vegan report card’ for schools where it grades a school from A (in schools that have plenty vegan options), B-C (in schools that have limited vegan options), and D-F (in schools that have scarce or no vegan options). According to their database, since 2013, the percentage of vegetarian college students has increased by 50%, and the number of vegan college students has more than doubled. As a result, the number of schools that received an A grade has more than tripled and more than 70% of US colleges provide or are taking steps to provide vegan options.
Based on the presence of an exclusively vegan dinig hall, availability of alternative milk and its default status and other criterias are evaluated in the survey done by PETA. A forerunner in this space is the University of North Texas which has a dedicated dining hall with vegan options. Not very far behind are the UC’s promoting meatless mondays’ and Stanford which has 50% vegan and 80% vegetarian options in all its menus on campus.
Berkeley has been taking drastic steps towards plant-centric food in the campus in the past few years. Cal Dining has been changing their menus constantly and accommodating more vegan options. PFI too collaborated with Cal Dining to achieve the same and the collaboration has continued since then to achieve the goal.
How is your campus performing?