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I am amazed this shit is still going on with schools in 2018.
I was raised a vegetarian by hippies in the 1970's, I was born in London but aged 3 my parents moved to Wales. They had not heard of vegetarians in Wales in the 1970's, and had no concept of what to provide for school dinners instead of meat, so they didn't. I think for about a year I was simply given extra portions of the boiled potato, carrot and sprouts that accompanied the meat meal, and nothing else. And it was the same every day. Talk about taking any joy out of food. To this day I am still haunted by boiled sprouts and carrots, the smell alone sets off my gag reflex.
In the end I think I simply refused and effectively went on hunger strike, and may parents went to meet the school and kicked off. They insisted me and my sister would to be allowed to bring in a packed lunch from home. My folks accepted we were the only 2 vegetarians in the school, and were not expecting lavish vegetarian alternatives, but simply giving extra carrots and sprouts slops, whose nutrients had long vanished in the 4 hour boiling process, was not acceptable.
We won, thank fuck, and the packed lunch birth movement in that school started. Soon other meat eating children followed us dissenters and went the packed lunch route. School dinners then were really terrible. That was in about 1978.
So it saddens me that 40 years later, in multicultural London not some rural backwater, that this same shit is still going on in our school system.
For the record I sacked off being a vegetarian in my early 20's, tandoori chicken was the first thing I tried and dam it was so good I never went back to being full veggie, but I only eat chicken and white fish. But I am permanently damaged by the boiled sprouts and carrots of that period, and while there is breath in my body I shall never willingly consume either ever again.
I can but you will need to be specific about what you want to know about. I can't write everything about what raising them vegan has thrown up.
All good.
All good. Occasionally pissed off when there is cake and other slime at kids parties, but that is fading.
Yes. No more or less than other kids who eat meat and animal products.
I understand their logic, to a point (communal experience, leveller, they'll all want to do their own thing [so what] otherwise, etc). But if the food they are giving him is not up to a decent standard, then he should be entitled to bring in his own food. It's been slowly bubbling away with us for the past year, slowly reaching boiling point.