Albany

It took some trial-and-error for Margaret Sullivan to introduce vegan food into students' daily diets.

When cafeterias offered "vegetarian" chili" in Styrofoam bowls, most kids passed it up. But with a little rebranding — now called "vegetable chili," the meatless stew is served in fast food-style paper bowls, alongside homemade corn bread — it quickly became one of the most popular items on the lunch menu.

"I have people stopping me in the hall saying 'it was so good!'" said Sullivan, who runs the food program at Saratoga Springs City schools. "We do have students who do care about having meatless options available to them."

Students, she found, were more likely to eat plant-based food that closely resembled the day's meat entree.

The district's experimentation with Meatless Fridays was less successful. Cafeterias were already serving pizza on Friday; schools would just replace the processed deli meats at the sandwich bar with hummus and vegetarian spreads. "I got a big petition from students asking for it back," Sullivan said. "It was disheartening for me because I would love to get rid of cold cuts, but there is really a demand for them."

The district is among 14 percent of school districts nationwide that provided varied vegan lunch options for kids in at least one school in 2017, a figure up from 11.5 percent in 2016, according to the School Nutrition Association.

School food providers are responding, in part, to the preferences of a generation of children and teens of who grew up "online" and tend to be environmentally and socially conscious consumers, according to market researchers.

Food documentaries available to view on Netflix and Youtube offer kids a window into some of the darker realities of factory farming.

The 2018 Australian documentary "Dominion," a celebrity-narrated film that seeks to expose the cruelty of modern agriculture through drone footage and hidden cameras, changed the mind of 9-year-old Caleb Chirico of Canajoharie.

"He saw some pretty graphic images about what happens at a slaughterhouse and said 'I don't want to eat any more meat and dairy,'" his father Brandon Chirico said.

Lately, Caleb's been making his own lunches, because the Canajoharie Central School District, which serves approximately 900 students in towns in Montgomery and Schoharie counties, provides few vegetable options in the lower grades.

"Caleb likes to have something else besides peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day, because basically everything besides the milk and the juice is meat," his father said.

Smaller districts, like Caleb's, may not have the budgetary leeway to experiment with vegetable options and throw out uneaten food.

Canajoharie's food service manager Lauri Broady noted that the district does its best to accommodate student's individual dietary needs. She noted that last year, the district started incorporating "Vegetarian Mondays" at the high school, and most Mondays in the lower grades. On these days, the main entree for everyone is vegetarian.

Most Capital Region school districts surveyed by the Times Union said high school students have access to an extensive salad bar and veggie burgers daily. Beans are offered as a filling on taco days, but meatless food options are more limited in the lower grades.

Some schools participate in farm-to-table initiatives, including Troy City School District. The district's food service director Rich Hollander has been doing Meatless Mondays since last September, but he kept the deli open as an alternative.

"If all the meat went away on Monday, my sales would go down on Monday," he said. "Kids at that age some of them really care about that whole thing but really most of them want to get their hands on whatever they can eat."

According to Amie Hamlin, executive director for the NY Coalition for Healthy School Food, which works to bring vegan options to schools across New York, all school children can benefit from having more vegetables in their diet.

"The bottom line is that the toll that poor diet is taking on our whole country, adults and kids, and the type of diet-related diseases have worked their way down to children," Hamlin said. "Children as young as 8 years old are prescribed cholesterol-lowering and blood pressure-lowering medicine when their reason for taking them is 100 percent avoidable."

Some recent studies have shown that Americans on average consume far too much protein and not enough plant-based foods. Hamlin said Americans need to reverse the trend.

While meat substitutes can be pricey, Sullivan said more school cooks should consider working with beans, which are inexpensive and loaded with protein and fiber.

"Vegan is more difficult, but realizing under USDA guidelines beans count as a protein source, they are really a superfood and they are so overlooked," Sullivan said.

Legislation that passed in June and was signed into law by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in December requires hospitals to provide plant-based meals upon request.

A similar bill that failed to move out of the legislature last session would require the same of school cafeterias.

Both laws were introduced by Manhattan Assemblyman and Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried and Sen. Brad Hoylman.

"Plant-based diets are healthy and environmentally-friendly," Gottfried said. "Students who choose plant-based diets should have that option when they're in the restricted environment of school."