Sunday, May 12, 2013

A Peaceful New World - Will It Come?



A Peaceful New World - Will It Come?

Recently, a NY school cafeteria went completely vegetarian! How cool is that? For more on that story….http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/02/health/new-york-vegetarian-school/index.html
This past week, some colleagues (work friends) of mine and I partnered with our cafeteria to heighten awareness of their newly created vegetarian options. I thought it was sweet because these friends aren’t even vegetarian but you’d think they were because they offered to help me and talked about all of the benefits of this healthy diet!
The cafeteria recently added “Vegan” and “Vegetarian” signage to the food which is great when trying to select options. They added “Flexitarian” posters with its definition in the area. In order to help get the employee’s attention, the Chef provided two vegan options for employees to taste test for free! Everybody loves free food! A quinoa, red onion and cucumber salad, and Peruvian lima beans with olive oil and scallions (delicious).
We set up a table to showcase the food and brought several cookbooks for employees to peruse through -Colleen Patrick Goudreau’s, “Vegan Table”, http://www.compassionatecook.com/ and Rip Esselstyn’s, “Engine 2 Diet”  http://engine2diet.com/ to name a few.
We didn’t think many people would come over or be interested since we have a lot of meat lovers that work with us. Our employee health team members joined our efforts so they could answer questions about health and nutrition. We didn’t know what kind of reaction to expect.
It was a rainy day so many employees stayed in for lunch instead of going out so it was very crowded! And guess what? It was a hit! Total success! People loved the food, the books and the effort! We asked people if they were interested in learning more about a flexitarian/vegetarian (baby steps) diet and joining an onsite local club – and we got 26 people interested! Some vegetarians, some not. Wow!
Now, we just need to figure out how to make it all work! See what people are interested in, how often we want to meet etc. Any and all suggestions are welcome!
PS - A lovely lady handed me the pamphlet in the photo above today. She could have picked from a number of pamphlets with different stories and themes, but she chose the one about peace coming, peace even between humans and animals. There is hope - we have that!

No comments:

Post a Comment