Kevin Lee prepares a Hawaiian Sushi Roll with avacado, cucumber and carrot topped with mango.Crystal Whitten, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Southern Adventist University, says fully one-third of her students at UTC this spring indicated they are vegetarians or don’t eat meat on a regular basis.
“I’m not surprised,” she says, “but I’m pleased to see a good number had thought through the issues. And a number of others are debating the merits of it.”
Whitten, a vegetarian since the age of 5 when she and her classmates slipped into their parents’ Adventist church classroom and saw a film on how animals are killed, says the attitude of her students and those like them is likely to fan the local desire for more vegetarian restaurants and vegetarian offerings at more traditional restaurants.
A Chattanooga area resident only since August, she says she is looking forward to trying items like the veggie burger at J. Alexander’s, the Vegan on Shrooms “burger” at Urban Stack Burger Lounge and the plantain taco at Taco Mamacita.
Indeed, Whitten points out, Taco Mamacita has a whole menu for vegetarians and vegan options.