“Manic Monday” was a song by The Bangles that rose to the top of the charts in 1986.
This past week, it seems Mayor de Blasio was trying to get New Yorkers to chime in on an updated version of this familiar tune … call it “Meatless Monday.”
Starting this September, thanks to the mayor’s latest nanny-state initiative, 1,800 New York City public schools will be “meatless” when serving their lunches on Mondays. Four city schools are adopting a fully vegetarian menu all week long.
“Cutting back on meat a little will improve New Yorkers’ health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions … we’re expanding Meatless Mondays to all public schools to keep our lunch and planet green for generations to come,” the mayor said in a statement concerning the matter.
Great. As if Monday’s weren’t a downer enough to begin with. Now kids have an added thing to look forward to getting back into the grind … no meat for lunch. Yay.
O.K., forcing kids to eat such bland pickin’s might be reasonable if the food they’re munching down actually did improve their health. Childhood obesity is a big problem.
But will de Blasio’s menu do the trick? Doubtful. From a strictly nutritional point of view, growing numbers of food experts are becoming more and more concerned about carbs and sugars and less and less about proteins and fats. Therefore replacing red meat with say, more “pasta sandwiches” and “meatless taco’s” (yes, these are actual items being touted) isn’t necessarily a big step in the right direction.
What about “Meatless Monday’s” eco-benefits? On this matter too, de Blasio’s initiative is serving up a big heap of nothing.
Leave alone the fact that catastrophic manmade global warming is a theory that’s been greatly overhyped, even the uber-liberal World Resources Institute admits animal agriculture only accounts for a mere six percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The fact that New York City students forgo one day of meat each week means next to nothing in the grand scope of things – other than to perhaps help de Blasio fulfill his paternal need to be the City’s cafeteria maid.
The truth of the matter is the mayor knows his initiative will do little to “save the Earth.” That’s not the point. What he is trying to do is to move the next generation into embracing the values that he and his friends on the Green Left share.
Whether it’s pushing young people to take part in lawsuits they don’t fully understand, go on strike from their classes in school in protest over climate change, or forgo eating meat on Monday’s, the Left is showing itself to be completely shameless. The time when kids could just go to school to learn the 3R’s (reading, writing and arithmetic) is no more – now they must become activists.
One can only hope de Blasio’s “Meatless Monday” is a short-lived fad, a dish that doesn’t sell well with the public. But from all appearances, it unfortunately seems more like the appetizer, with a main serving yet to come.