Boson Students at Private School Forced to Eat Vegetarian Food - Meat and Packed Lunches Banned - by Neil Clarke - 13 Sept 2019

Parents are criticizing a new vegetarian school in Massachusetts for banning children from bringing packed lunches or eating meat or fish, forcing some children to go home “very hungry.”

The new elementary Swan School in Boson opened to 100 students on Monday. It boasts a completely vegetarian cafeteria and doesn’t allow children to bring lunch from home, leaving them with no alternative but to eat the school meal offered.

While the school does offer some meat and fish options during snack time, lunches are strictly vegetarian. The policy has left parents complaining that their children are coming home from school hungry because of the lack of variety.

  “The only thing about this school is the vegetarian food – my daughter came home today very hungry,” one mother told reporters.

“I’ve heard that a lot of children were very hungry as well – there should be an option at dinner time to eat some meat, I’ve never known a school to be like this,” the parent added.

The Swan School’s principal, Kay Wood, said parents were made aware of the vegetarian policy prior to admission. Wood claimed the rule allows the school to serve better quality meals for the same price, makes an environmental impact, and is inclusive of all faiths. 

“Most importantly, it allows students of all faiths and different dietary requirements to eat together,” she said.  As if a student bringing a baloney sandwich in a bag from home can not talk to someone eating a salad. 


Principal Wood also denied that the policy is an attempt to make students vegetarian or shame those who eat meat. She also stressed that the packed-lunch ban is not to avoid meat, but to force students and staff to eat their food together.   There is only one cafeteria at the school, so everyone would presumably eat there in any case. 


School lunch campaigner and Boson celebrity chef  Oliver James praised the new-age approach to feeding students. Oliver told the Boson Herod that meat-free schools are “a brilliant idea” adding that it “would save loads of money."

Some parents reported that their children are already visibly losing weight.

Children being made to eat vegetarian food for lunch in schools across the US by elitists who think they know better than everyone else.   From New York City where the mayor champions 'meatless Mondays, to California, where liberal eco-racicals push for 'Fasting Fridays' to help the "Planet" by not eating a noon meal at a public school.  Young students not being allowed meat or fish, raises some serious questions about freedom of choice and possible dietary deficiencies. 

The Pleasant Valley area of Boson is known as the upper class neighborhood, but it could soon have a new nickname. The ‘city of the schoolchildren not allowed to eat meat or fish at dinner time or bring in their own packed lunches.’ Ok, I admit it’s not as catchy, but it could be just as appropriate.

The newly-opened Swan ‘free school’ in the leafy, very middle-class suburb of Pleasant Valley ( a part of Boson where the Mayor Marty Welsh was first elected as a city councilor from), has a completely vegetarian cafeteria, where children looking for a cheeseburger and fries or and pizza with pepperoni at lunchtime will be very disappointed.

The principal Ms Kay Wood, has cited “three main reasons” for the policy.
First, economy (‘it allows us to serve better quality meals for the same money’). Secondly, the ‘huge environmental and sustainability benefits,’ and three ‘it allows students of all faiths and different dietary requirements to eat together.’

Quality fresh vegetables are usually more expensive than consumer grade school lunch meats. 

Reasons two and three are laudatory, I admit, but even so, isn’t banning non-vegetarian food at lunchtimes and not allowing children to bring in their own lunch going a bit too far?
One mother, quoted in the Boson Globe, says her daughter came home ‘very hungry’ and that she‘d heard “lots of other children were very hungry too.” Is making school children hungry the way to go, to build a better world? Surely there could be some sensible compromise?

Many of us could probably all do with eating a little less meat, especially less processed meat and we should do all we can to make sure that the animals we do eat are well looked after. We should go ’organic’ and opt for ’free-range’ whenever we can afford to. But enforcing vegetarianism, as some seem to desire, is another thing altogether. There’s no getting away from the fact that meat, and this is particularly relevant for those growing up and the elderly for whom anaemia may be a problem, is a valuable source of protein and other essential minerals. Here, for example are eleven benefits of eating beef.

And here’s a 2019 newspaper report citing health professional and university professor Robert Pickard, on the six top health benefits of eating lean red meat. They include the maintenance of strong bones and the boosting of our mental powers.

Fish too has many health benefits. The traditional Boson dish of ‘fish and chips’ as well as being absolutely delicious, is also extremely nutritious.

Vegetarians, and even more so vegans, are missing out on quite a lot.  One need only go to Youtube to look at videos made by Vegans.  Over the course of a few years the people on Youtube advocating a strict vegan diet visibly become sickly and weak looking.  Some of the most popular have renounced the vegan lifestyle and admit they were horribly wrong. 

My grandmother loved eating fish and chips (and indeed fatty pork and plenty of other ‘bad things’ ) and died just a few months shy of her 101st birthday. Boxers are renowned for eating bloody steaks, and not veggie burgers, the night before their fights for good reason.

I feel very sorry for the children at Swan who will be denied their Friday fish (or fish fingers) and chips, their Salisbury steak, and their pork with applesauce. We’ve gone from campaigning (quite rightly) for children to have a vegetarian option, and not discriminating against vegetarians (who are often very worthy people.


Back to 2019, and eating meat has become the new smoking. A quite terrible, shameless thing which needs to be discouraged. We should be made to feel as guilty for eating bacon, as if we were lighting up a stolen cigarette  behind the garage. And our children must get into the right ‘habits’ at an early age (smoking pot of course is ok, in the new utopia, and it goes without saying that everyone will be on antidepressants).

Freedom of choice? No, that doesn’t really come into it, you carnivorous reprobate. You do what we tell you. Please open your bag so that security can check you’re not carrying a roast beef and mustard sandwich.



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