Berlin Court Says Schools Don't Have to Provide Vegan and Paleo Lunch Options

It can't be easy to be a school cafeteria manager these days. Your messy little customers come, tray in hand, with gluten allergies, low-carb diets, peanut allergies, self-imposed gummy bear-only diets, and raw food diets. It's enough to drive a lunch lady to the brink of madness.

But in Germany, Berlin's administrative court has gotten involved to make the beleaguered cafeteria worker's job a bit easier. On Wednesday, the court ruled that schools aren't required to provide food in accordance with the dietary choices of parents and their kids, including "paleo, low carb, low fat, raw foodism, fruitarianism, or veganism."

A father of a girl at a Berlin primary school brought a case to court after the girl's school district refused to provide her vegan food for lunch, according to The Local. But the district ruled that since she couldn't present a doctor's note saying she required vegan food for her health, the petition was denied.

The father had argued that his daughter's request was covered by the German constitution's protection of the freedom of conscience. He also said that the school district met the dietary restrictions of people who cited religious reasons for following certain diets, and that the ruling isolated his daughter from her peers.

But the court wasn't hearing it, and said since she wasn't being forced to eat non-vegan food or to starve, it wasn't their job to cater to her dietary choice. She could order food or bring her own lunch, as she had been doing.

The ruling grouped a vegan diet in with some comparatively flash-in-the-pan diets, something that might not sit well with the many local Berlin vegans. Last month in Berlin, a vegan restaurant opening in Berlin got so crazy that someone called the cops.

The court ruling restores order in the lunchroom for now, where one could only imagine hordes of tiny raw foodists were previously tearing shit up—that is, until a new –ism diet necessitates a new ruling.