Each Tuesday, the Encore Growing old By way of Arts Middle in Midtown bustles with exercise and laughter as seniors sit at spherical tables, pen and paper in hand, taking part in bingo.
That is no accident. On Tuesdays, the middle serves its weekly plant-based meal, which town has required in any respect its senior facilities since July 2023.
Apprehensive about low attendance due the meatless choices, Encore has sweetened its Tuesday pot with the favored recreation of likelihood.
It really works nicely. Yakov Keiserman, 72, a self-professed bean-hater who doesn’t normally eat the vegetable-based meals, is now a daily buyer.
“If there’s bingo, I’ll make sure that I attempt to come,” he stated. If there are beans for the principle course, Keiserman passes them down the desk to any individual else.
“We did decide Bingo Day on goal as a result of we weren’t certain how it could be acquired,” Jennifer Asquino, the director of the middle, stated. “However we all know lots of people come and would a minimum of attempt it.”
Three years after the Eric Adams administration required senior facilities to serve one plant-based meal per week, many venues throughout town have constructed workarounds like Encore’s bingo gambit to fight low attendance.
An evaluation by The Metropolis Reporter of a yr of meal service information from the Division for the Growing old, masking 309 facilities, discovered attendance drops sharply at some facilities on plant-based days.
Necessary Meatless
The Division for the Growing old started requiring the weekly plant-based lunch in July 2023. An inside memo obtained by The Metropolis Reporter on the time advised facilities they would want to offer a minimum of one plant-based meal per week to New Yorkers over 60 who eat at facilities or obtain meal service at residence. The memo allowed the plant-based entrée to exchange the weekly vegetarian meal facilities had been already required to serve.
For the meals to be compliant, the principle protein supply should be a minimally processed plant-based protein, however the meal can nonetheless include a small quantity of dairy or eggs. Each lunch the company funds is also served with a chilly pack of milk, juice, bread, butter and fruit.
The Metropolis Reporter in contrast every heart’s common lunch rely on its plant-based day towards its common rely throughout the opposite 4 weekdays, based on information in the Division for the Growing old’s report for fiscal yr 2025.
On the Carter Burden Community’s Roosevelt Island Middle, Wednesday, the plant-based day, is the lowest-attended lunch of the week. Wednesdays averaged 58 lunches served by fiscal yr 2025, towards 67 on Tuesdays and 68 on Fridays. Lisa Fernandez, who directs the middle, stated: “It’s positively due to the vegan meal.”
This sample repeats at many older grownup facilities throughout town. On the Chinese language Planning Council’s Chinatown Neighborhood Senior Middle, Wednesday lunches fall by 26% when the inexperienced meal is on the menu, roughly 66 fewer meals a day at a middle that in any other case feeds greater than 250. (Seniors usually go away a $1 donation for every meal.)
At Central Harlem’s Beatrice Lewis heart, Tuesday, the day the place veggie-meals are served, averages simply 53 lunches served, half of a traditional day. At its sister location, Central Harlem St. Nicolas, the place the chosen day is Monday, attendance can also be half of the weekday common.
‘A Cultural Factor’
One of many steepest drops is on the Linden Boulevard location of the Allen Neighborhood Senior Residents Middle in Jamaica, Queens, which rotates its vegetable-based meal day each week.
“On a mean, for a daily day, we’re seeing 90 folks,” Angella King, the director, stated. “And when we have now our vegan days, we’re seeing possibly 40, 45.”
She attributes the low attendance to seniors taking their enterprise elsewhere on plant-based days. Alpha Phi Alpha, Rochdale and Allen Neighborhood Rockaway Senior Middle are all in the identical space, and members will typically drive or take the bus to go there, King stated.
“When one program is serving the vegan meals, they only go to a program that’s serving a daily meal,” she stated.
The sharp lower is also because of the demographic her heart serves, King urged. “The vast majority of our members are Black, Southern, or from the Caribbean,” King stated. “It’s additionally a cultural factor.”
She has tried to supply quite a lot of menus on the plant-based days in an try to extend the numbers. “They simply don’t go over nicely,” she stated.
“Serving them like a bean stew or a falafel, it’s one thing that they might wish to attempt,” she added. “But it surely’s not one thing that they wish to have on a weekly foundation.”
Kitchen Karma
Just a few facilities, alternatively, see no significant dip in attendance on veggie-based meal days. One widespread trait they share is that they’ve their very own kitchens to cook dinner the meals recent on web site and adapt to the tastes of their members.
The Chinese language Planning Council’s second Chinatown heart, Open Door Senior Citizen Middle, is one such instance. Its plant-based Thursdays, throughout fiscal yr 2025, served on common 248 lunch models, solely a slight drop from Mondays at 253 models or Tuesdays at 257 models.
Po-ling Ng, who directs the middle, stated she runs a buying operation constructed round seasonal greens most well-liked by her members, who’re nearly completely of Chinese language origin.
For instance, she is aware of that her members get pleasure from bitter melon, a squash-like vegetable widespread in Chinese language delicacies, and tracks its worth so she will procure it for the vegetable-meal days. “When it’s low cost, we attempt our greatest to present them what they prefer to eat,” she stated.
Jennifer Asquino, at Encore, stated you will need to have a kitchen that may adapt to members’ suggestions and tastes. When seniors complained about too many beans, the kitchen in the reduction of. Once they requested for potatoes, they bought potatoes.
“I believe that for some folks, they hear plant-based or veganism, they usually instantly make sure assumptions that the meals gained’t be good,” she stated. “A few of these considerations had been addressed simply by producing good meals.”
The strategy is paying off. Encore stated it serves 143 meals on plant-based days, simply barely beneath the common of 156 on regular days.
Lisa Fernandez at Roosevelt Island Middle stated considered one of her limitations is that she doesn’t have a kitchen on-site. Her meals arrive flash frozen from a sister web site on East 74th Road. Whereas the sister location that cooks can supply options on the times vegan meals are served, comparable to a black bean veggie burger or a salad, “We don’t cook dinner right here,” Fernandez stated. “The opposite areas that do cook dinner on web site…have greater choices than we do. We don’t have the choice as a result of we simply have a catered meal.”
‘Schmaltz Up the Meals’
Seniors interviewed by The Metropolis Reporter stated the plant-based meals are just too bland.
Louella Streitz, 71, a volunteer on the Roosevelt Island Senior Middle, began operating month-to-month cooking demonstrations after seeing some members go away their greens uneaten. She serves kale, broccoli rabe, blue oyster mushrooms from the farmers market, plated with coloration and served by hand to an keen clientele.
“The difficulty is the way you serve it and the way you cook dinner it,” Streitz stated. “It’s not simply boiling it and dumping it in a single nook of a platter.”
Cary Gibbs, 80, has come to Encore for a couple of decade and did a 30-day vegan problem that he stated he loved enormously.
“Many seniors have points with ldl cholesterol, blood strain, coronary heart, sure issues,” he stated. “So having a great intermix of greens and veggie meals is a really wholesome concept.”
Nevertheless, it takes just a little additional for him to benefit from the plant plate. “It’s a must to schmaltz up the meals,” he stated, “It’s just a little bland, so [I bring] my selfmade horseradish and my scorching sauce.”
Requested whether or not he was severe, he fished a bottle of scorching sauce and a translucent jar of horseradish from his bag as proof.
“You assume I’m kidding? Why would I lie?”
Holly Lundberg, 84, a vegetarian who was consuming on the Roosevelt Island heart for the primary time, arrived on the identical conclusion inside one lunch.
“It doesn’t have sufficient salt,” she stated. “I’ll convey my very own salt subsequent time.”
‘It’s Not a Selection’
Throughout two dozen interviews at older grownup facilities, The Metropolis Reporter discovered that the grievance is much less that diners dislike plant-based meals and extra that the seniors felt town shouldn’t take away alternative of their diets.
“I’ve been to different senior facilities the place they’ve a meal aside from the common,” stated Hermando Reyes, 76, a long-time buyer at Encore. “Right here, it’s only one alternative for the day. If it occurs to be vegetarian, good for the vegans, however it’s not a alternative.”
He additionally identified that many seniors who come to Encore shouldn’t have the choice of consuming some other place. “Perhaps they will’t afford a meal, so that they eat no matter is there,” Reyes stated.
Eileen Casey, 84, who spent her profession in Broadway musicals and now dines at Encore, stated she appreciated the meals.
“They’re wholesome, and you understand you possibly can’t have meat day-after-day,” she stated. It additionally, she added, retains her weight down.
Asquino, the director of the Encore Midtown heart, stated a plant-based possibility needs to be obtainable day-after-day. “We’d love to present them the choices to eat the best way that they wish to eat,” she stated.
Kevin Kiprovski, director of public coverage at LiveOn NY, which represents roughly 110 nonprofit growing old providers suppliers throughout town, stated the requirement round meals is a query of undue authority relatively than dietary recommendation.
“It’s an unbelievable quantity of energy to resolve when folks eat and what they eat,” he stated. “They need to be centered within the choices about their very own lives as a lot as they presumably can.”
Former Mayor Eric Adams credited a vegan weight loss plan with reversing his Sort 2 diabetes and, along with imposing the requirement on town’s senior facilities, pushed town hospital system and colleges to serve extra plant-based meals.
Whether or not the Mamdani administration will maintain the requirement is unknown. When requested concerning the problem of low attendance charges on plant-based days, metropolis Growing old Commissioner Dr. Lisa Scott-McKenzie stated in an announcement that general attendance has gone up since July 2023.
Senior facilities served 5.5 million meals in fiscal yr 2023, 6.1 million in fiscal yr 2024 and 6.4 million in fiscal yr 2025, based on metropolis information. “Throughout the identical interval, the variety of common day by day individuals at older grownup facilities additionally elevated from 24,545 in fiscal yr 2023 to 27,456 in fiscal yr 2025,” Scott-McKenzie stated.
Keiserman, for his half, is just not in search of dietary steering from town.
“I like my candy tea,” he stated. “And I’m 72. And there’s nothing incorrect with me.”
