Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and several City Council members want school lunches in the city to be healthier and leaner.
Adams will join Councilman Fernando Cabrera to introduce a resolution that calls on the Department of Education to remove processed foods from public school cafeterias.
The bill was slated to be introduced at Wednesday’s City Council meeting, which was canceled due to weather.
The borough president, who battled type-2 diabetes, said he grew concerned about the students’ health after reading studies from the World Health Organization that classified processed meat as a group 1 carcinogen.
“If we want to change the culture of bad food, we need to rethink the way we feed our kids in the schools,” he said.
The city serves nearly 950,000 meals to public school students a day, but it’s unclear how much of that is processed food. The Department of Education didn’t return requests for comment.
Adams said the city has been making some progress with healthier options, such as instituting “meatless Monday” at some school cafeterias.
The resolution has several supporters in the Council, including council members Justin Brannan and Helen Rosenthal.
Lisa Young, an adjunct professor of nutrition at NYU, called the proposal a good step toward combating obesity and poor nutrition.
“The early exposure [of processed foods] has their pallet craving that stuff, so when you get them to try to change their habits later, it’s harder,” she said.
