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California Schools Cut Meat, Cheese From Lunches To Fight Global Warming

By Joie M Gahum | Update Date: Feb 16, 2017 07:20 AM EST

Turning student lunches into a climate-friendly dish for Oakland schools has been one of the moves California has made to be able to contribute to the fight against global warming.

Oakland schools in California collaborated with the environmental group Friends of the Earth (FOE) in fighting against global warming by cutting meat and cheese in student lunches. The FOE provided schools with a lunch menu designed without food items that are unsustainable for the planet, Daily Caller reports.

The new menu will feature less meat and more plant-based food items. Meat and cheese that will be served in the school will come from pastured and organic dairy cows. The usual beef hot dogs and pepperoni pizza, schools will be serving stir-fried tofu and vegan tostadas. Meat and cheese will still be served but less frequently and in reduced portion sizes in these Oklahoma schools.

This move will reduce carbon and water footprint and is also a way for kids to save lunch money. However, no studies on whether this change will affect the health of the students will be conducted. Since the start of the new food program, carbon dioxide emissions from the school have declined by 14%. This percentage is equivalent to taking 127 cars off the road.

Animals are also threatened directly by climate change and global warming, Live Science reports. More than 700 species could face extinction due to global warming. The research had discovered that 7 percent of mammals and 4 percent of birds under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species directly affected by global warming and climate change.

Further studies conducted about climate change were re-accessed. It is discovered that nearly half of the world's population of threatened and endangered animals, as well as birds, are seriously decreasing in numbers due to global warming.

The impacts of global warming to the future is predictable but can be altered by the measures and decisions that people do in the present. California's move in reducing their carbon footprint by changing their student's eating habits at school is just one of the possible moves that can help in preserving nature and fighting global warming.

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