Vegetable Weeks in the School Canteen – Great or Wonderful?

Based on the “School of Indifference” by Friedrich von Boris, the Graf Zeppelin High School in Haveler, in collaboration with the Zeppelin Museum, has announced Inconsequence Weeks. In the canteen, for example, there was only vegetarian food for two weeks and the school community tried to do without paper and plastic. The German language course, first course level, presented by Dagmar Mader, accompanied the project with texts.

Two weeks without meat – two weeks without consequences – this is the project of the artist Friedrich von Boris. His project is about letting go of lifestyles and things that have a negative impact on the climate for two weeks. His idea attracted many retirees and interested participants.

Among the participants was the Graf-Zeppelin-Gymnasium, which turned everyday school life upside down in the weeks of February 27 to March 10, 2023 by saving paper, plastic and even introducing a new meal plan that is more climate friendly. But why was the school’s incentive to participate in these weeks and how did vegan food fall in with the students?

In addition to saving paper and doing without plastic, the school lunch menu also changed during this period. Only vegetarian food was served during the two weeks, to the annoyance of meat lovers. This was most noticeable in spending on food.

Mrs. Salomon, one of the kitchen ladies at Graf Zeppelin High School, reported that far fewer students had lunch in the canteen than usual in the first week. However, this may also be due to the fact that a large number of classes were on excursions and a lot of lessons were canceled in the first week. In the second week of the project, the number of meals spent was “better,” Salomon told us, however, fewer meals were spent than usual.

When people then asked what things should look like in the future and if that could be imagined in the long term, Ms. Salomon said no, because the students miss the meat. Something like this would be possible for a week in a year, but not forever. Which is understandable, as there were small complications from the food provider at first.

The reason for this is that the effort of a second vegan meal was just too much. And Mrs. Lind, who was the lunch menu planner, has more to do, the food is delivered by ZF kitchen and they serve only 1 vegetarian dish in ZF and 5 non-vegetarian dishes. As a result, another “extra” meal had to be designed. However, the school stuck with the project so much that two vegan dishes were prepared.

But what are the opinions of students and teachers? Feedback from students and teachers was diametrically opposite. Some found the fortnight was very good, as they only had a vegan lunch menu beforehand and made the most of the fact that there were now 2 vegan dishes. On the other hand, there was some annoyance because they preferred the meat dish. However, many of them also accepted vegetarian dishes. They just tried it instead of judging too quickly.

comment: In my opinion, the weeks of no consequences was a good and enjoyable experience, as I really tried to stick to the goals of this project and follow all the rules as best I could. In addition, I must say that I prefer meat dishes, but the weeks have shown me that vegetarian dishes also have their appeal in one way or another.

However, I feel that this project was not well communicated and caught the attention of the student body. that’s unfortunate. Good communication is also likely to increase student engagement.

However, the difficulties in communication are also due to technology, because during this period the servers have been switched and no information can be transmitted via Moodle. Overall, I personally found the project very interesting and can imagine doing something like this again in the future.