Next year, New York City public schools will initiate "Meatless Mondays" as part of their lunch program. Students will be served all vegetarian food for breakfast and lunch. (Note: photo above for illustrative purposes only. Not representative of actual school cafeteria menu.) From CNN:

"Cutting back on meat a little will improve New Yorkers' health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions," de Blasio said at a news conference. "We're expanding Meatless Mondays to all public schools to keep our lunch and planet green for generations to come..."

School leaders in New York said doing this just makes good sense.

"For those who scoff at this notion, I have some simple advice: Look at the science," Staten Island Borough President James Oddo said. "Look at the data. Look at the childhood obesity. Look at pre-diabetes diagnoses. Look at the fact that 65% of American kids age 12 to14 shows signs of early cholesterol disease. Then, perhaps you will embrace the fact that we can't keep doing things the same way, including welcoming the idea of Meatless Mondays."

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Mercy For Animals is a group that advocates a plant-based diet, and they have put together a comparison of resources needed to support a plant-based diet vs. an omnivore diet. Read the rest

Food Exposed with Nelufar Hedayat is a timely look at the future of food for the globe. In this episode, she visits a lab working on meeting the demand of consumers joining the "veg rev," including the growing numbers of flexitarians (semi-vegetarians) who only eat meat occasionally. Read the rest

Simone Giertz is the beloved creator of a series of Shitty Robots, and now she's working at longer lengths, having created hilariously profane, shitty-robot-themed show about vegetarianism and robots, which culminates in the construction, stalking, killing and eating of a tofu-impregnated robot that she and Adam Savage built. It's pretty much perfect. (via Beyond the Beyond) Read the rest

People who work in chicken and turkey processing plants run by America's biggest poultry producers are routinely denied bathroom breaks. Because of this, some resort to wearing diapers while they're at work on the processing line, Oxfam America said in a report released Wednesday.

`They are in danger of serious health problems,' says the report. Read the rest

For some values of guilt-free, anyway: I ate practically nothing but lionfish when we went diving in the Caribbean, and every delicious forkful helped save the reef from a destructive, invasive species. Read the rest

Unfortunately, PETA is not able to turn noted cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer's childhood home in Bath, Ohio into a vegan restaurant. The plan was to call the restaurant "Eat for Life: Home Cooking" but zoning laws stood in their way.

"It was also suggested that we consider converting it into a vegan bed and breakfast, but we're not optimistic that many people would want to make the trip to spend a night in the house.," PETA Media Director Moira Colley said.

Of course, the whole idea could easily have just been a PETA publicity stunt. In any case, the home is still up for sale. (WKYC, thanks Gil Kaufman!) Read the rest

Raphael Brion: "the website Vegan Sellout List ... is a refined mix of unchecked self-righteousness and threats of actual physical violence." [Eater] Read the rest