Disney Celebrated Earth Day With An Unexpected Chocolate Treat

If you're looking for the best food-based celebration for Earth Day, one particular menu item at a Walt Disney World restaurant might be worth considering. The park offered a boot on one of its restaurant menus, but unlike the time film director Werner Herzog ate a shoe for losing a bet (via YouTube), the special shoe was not real. It was made of chocolate. 

According to images shared on Instagram, it's called the "Plant (Based) in Boot." The design, which one commenter noted is similar to the plant the robot finds in the movie "WALL-E," was made from "a chocolate spice cake with coconut ganache and an edible sprout in a chocolate boot." As the name suggests, all of the chocolate used to make the dessert was plant-based. It was sold at The Mara in the Animal Kingdom theme park for $6.99. Unfortunately, as the official blog post detailed, this was only available on April 22. However, the blog continued by explaining the ways Disney World has made efforts to incorporate plant-based foods into its year-round menu.

Disney's theme parks in the U.S. have made efforts to cater to vegans with a plant-based menu. As CNN reported in 2019, the company announced that its parks, which sold for selling millions of hot dogs and burgers, would make 400 vegan dishes available to guests.

However, Disney World discovered that the project would not be as easy as an announcement. Cheryl Dolven, a registered dietician and the manager of health and wellness for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, explained to Yahoo Life that terms like vegetarian and vegan were a bit vague, so the company pivoted to the phrase plant-based. For example, the Earth Day treat used that term in its name.

Dolven clarified that plant-based items at Disney Parks and Resorts "are made without animal meat, dairy, eggs or honey. Instead they're made with ingredients from plants: vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, seeds and those types of things." In January, Disney World had finally succeeded in its goal of adding one dish that follows this definition to every menu in the park. So even though the "WALL-E" boot was only for Earth Day, similar dishes are available year-round.