Toulouse: do we need more vegetarian menus in the canteen?
Monday, a lively controversy agitates the social networks between the elected representatives of the majority at the town hall of Toulouse and the Toulouse ecologists on vegetarian meals in the canteen. This controversy raises the question of the menus served in the canteen.
Since the start of the 2022-2023 school year, the Europe-Ecologie-les-Verts (EELV) mayor of Grenoble, Eric Piolle has chosen to put vegetarian menus in the canteen by default while requiring parents to choose a menu to meat base. This measure did not go unnoticed and won Toulouse. In reaction to this, a message was posted Monday by the elected representatives of the majority of the town hall of Toulouse on Twitter. “In Grenoble, the Greens are in food totalitarianism. For many children, the canteen is the only balanced meal of the day! “, wrote the members of the group” Aimer Toulouse “. The use of the word totalitarianism has provoked a lively controversy on the side of Toulouse elected officials from EELV. “It is quite simply shameful in the current context, in such a fractured society, to use this type of formulation”, reacted Hélène Cabanes, Toulouse elected representative of EELV. According to her, the initiative of the town hall of Grenoble “is going in the right direction”. “We need to change our habits, both for nutritional and environmental reasons. We eat too much meat in the opinion of many nutritionists,” she argued. It also indicates that Eric Piolle’s measure does not impose vegetarianism on families.
In Grenoble, the Greens are in food totalitarianism
For many children, the canteen is the only balanced meal of the day!
In Toulouse :
u2705Local products, meat from the South-West
u2705Optional vegetarian menu!
u274cNo ideology on the plateu26a0ufe0fAnd without a price increase!
— Aimer Toulouse Group (@Aimer_Toulouse) September 5, 2022
Jean-Jacques Bolzan, elected by the majority at the town hall of Toulouse, says he is opposed “to this diktat where we impose a diet from a minority to a majority, in Toulouse, we are doing just the opposite”. The 35,000 meals prepared each day by the municipality are therefore mainly composed of fish or meat. “Once a week, we have a vegetarian menu, the rest of the time, we leave the choice,” says Jean-Jacques Bolzan, who put forward the need for choice. It also advances the content of the menus mainly composed of local, quality products, purchased from producers in the region and then served to Toulouse students.