A First of its Kind Vegan School!

The beautiful vegan campus at Solid Rock Community School!

This health coach, educator, restaurant owner, activist, and businesswoman reveals her extraordinary story: how going vegan brought her back from the brink of blindness and crippling illness! Today, vibrant and active, Michele Fasnacht runs the Solid Rock Community School in Tampa Springs, Florida! This K-12 non-profit, private school offers an entirely plant-based menu to its students! It’s the first of its kind in Florida. Michele and her husband also have a fabulous, new, vegan restaurant in Trinity, Florida: Green Culture! It’s worth a trip from Tampa or St Pete!

The children at this school eat a garden of fresh balanced meals like tis one!

Michele was plagued with a myriad of health problems before she transitioned to a plant-based diet. She was diagnosed with lupus and multiple sclerosis. She went virtually blind, had pneumonia, painful bowel movements, and more. In 2015, she saw a post on Facebook that inspired her to stop eating fish. Then, she saw a video about the dairy industry on Facebook, and she was horrified. She stopped eating cheese and dairy immediately. Within a day after giving up dairy, she felt the difference. Michele did research and found a link between dairy and MS. She was in shock none of her doctors had told her this information she was finding out on her own. In one month, all of Michele’s symptoms were gone. Her brain fog was gone, her numbness and tingling were gone. She was able to use the restroom without pain. She was in disbelief, thinking that her ailments would certainly come back. Michele decided to keep it up, and to this day she is still ok! Her lesions disappeared, her eyesight has improved dramatically, and she tested negative for lupus! Now, Michele swears by a plant-based diet and she wants to share her plant-based healing with everyone!

In 2004, Michele originally started the 501c3 nonprofit, Solid Rock Community School, for her own kids. They started with 12 kids and now there are 240 kids who attend the school. She was horrified by what the kids were eating for lunch so she looked into vegetarian options. When the county sent her vegetarian meals loaded with dairy and animal products, she knew she would have to take matters into her own hands. She gradually phased out the food sent from the county and then they began offering vegan options to the kids. This included healthy plant-based meals and fresh juices. Michele took it a step further and she started offering plant-based cooking classes and Q and A’s with plant-based doctors for parents. This year Michele has made her school 100% plant-based and the kids love it! They were once hesitant to eat vegan food, and now they love eating all of the veggie burgers, veggie dogs, salad bar and more! They even have a chef that designs their plant-based food menu for the kids. It doesn’t get better than that!

Michelle and her husband, Eric, pose in their new amazing restaurant!

Michele and her husband, Eric, also have an amazing vegan restaurant, named Green Culture. They were inspired to open the restaurant when they got tired of having to drive long distances to find good healthy vegan food. Green Culture has literally become a hot spot for green culture, where vegans, whole-food vegans, raw vegans, formerly closeted vegans, and pre-vegans are able to go and eat in peace. They play videos that promote plant-based compassionate lifestyles. They even have cool pro-vegan wallpaper! In an area where there aren’t many vegan options, this restaurant is paying the way for anyone in the area to choose healthy cruelty-free options!

Stop by Green Culture next time you’re in the Tampa area!

The times are changing and so is the culture. Jane cites the use of plant-based meat options in several popular fast-food restaurants across the nation. People are getting sick and new studies are correlating their ailments with their diets. People are shifting their eating habits to survive. As demand rises for plant-based options, businesses follow suit because bottom line, they want to make money. As part of her mission to help mold the young minds of children, Michele is teaching the children about compassion. They even have the opportunity to learn from compassionate leaders who come to speak to them. Kids can really get a well-rounded education at Solid Rock Community School, preparing them for a compassionate future. We can only hope that schools in the US and around the world will follow suit and offer plant-based options while teaching children and their parents how to live lifestyles that promote health and life for all beings.