Miami’s Johnson and Wales Adding Vegan Options to Campus Menus & Curriculum
Back in 2011, the University of North Texas made news with its first-ever all vegan cafeteria. Four years later, however, other academic institutions haven’t been particularly quick to adopt vegan-friendly policies.
One exception is Miami’s Johnson and Wales University’s North Miami campus. There, a plant-based lifestyle is spreading like wildfire, as the Miami New Times reports.
Courtesy of JWU
The move to incorporate more vegan options into both on-campus eating establishments and the culinary’s school’s curriculum has been the work of teaching assistant Kelsey Carter, Director of Culinary Operations, Chris Wagner and other students and teachers who’ve followed suit. Even the school’s Interim Campus President, Larry Rice, is vegan.
“We do have a lot of students and faculty that live with a plant-based diet, so we try to incorporate that and give students an opportunity to expand their knowledge and expertise on vegan cooking,” Carter told the New Times.
On-campus food service hosts a vegan Wednesday, and culinary instructors have started incorporating plant-based techniques into classes. They’ve also started creating more plant-based menus for campus events, and even created an all-vegan Thanksgiving dinner last year for a local radio station.
“I think the vegan movement, if you want to call it that, pretty soon will be a very normal thing,” Wagner told the New Times. “Unfortunately, chefs are very little prepared for that, and hopefully we become an institution that can really pilot that in an educational way and bring that forward a little bit. If students are interested, this can only grow.”
With Johnson and Wales adding vegan options like this, hopefully other schools won’t be too far behind.
“This whole thing is really exploding,” Wagner told the New Times.
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