Meatless Monday: One Day of Going Veg Makes Difference

The Meatless Monday website provides recipes for vegetarian dishes, such as this Mushroom Pancake Salad, every week.

We’ve been cutting down our meat consumption since we told you about reading Michael Pollan’s Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (Penguin, 2009) and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals (Little, Brown and Co., 2009).

Once we really started to make more vegetarian meal choices, we were surprised by how much meat we had been consuming. We’re not alone — according to the USDA, American women typically consume 135 percent of the recommended daily allowance for meat. So we were sure we had the right idea when we heard about Meatless Monday, a nonprofit initiative established in association with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The goal of the initiative, which began in 2003, is to help reduce meat consumption by 15 percent to encourage health and environmental benefits.

Substituting vegetable proteins such as beans and lentils for meat reduces saturated fat intake, which is linked to chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, obesity and diabetes. Consuming more vegetables also boosts fiber intake — an area in which the American diet often falls short. There’s also a fairly hefty carbon footprint that comes from eating meat, in terms of greenhouse gasses, water consumption and fossil fuels. Check out “The Math Behind Meatless Monday” for more information about the environmental impact of going meat-free once a week.

While green initiatives and the obesity crisis might be relatively recent concerns, the idea of Meatless Monday goes back to World War I, when Herbert Hoover, then-head of the U.S. Food Administration, encouraged Americans to conserve food for the troops by forgoing meat on Monday — as well as participating in “Wheatless Wednesday.” The current movement received increased attention after Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer recently proposed Meatless Mondays in New York City public schools, following in the steps of Baltimore City Public Schools, where Monday cafeteria options switched to vegetarian fare in September 2009. Currently, there are eight Meatless Monday international programs and 30 college and university programs as well. In the UK, Sir Paul McCartney and daughters Stella and Mary started Meat Free Monday, which also has the support of Gwyneth Paltrow in her GOOP newsletter.

If you’re at a loss for some meat-free meal ideas, watch the recipe videos or look at the new batch of recipes every Monday, such as Fettuccine Florentine, Sweet Potato Burritos and Mushroom Pancake Salad. We also plan to check out some fine vegetarian restaurant fare, such as the Monday Night Vegetarian Menu at Dovetail in Manhattan. Do you think Meatless Mondays can be a good personal goal for being health- and eco-conscious?

Tags: Baltimore City, Brown and Company Ltd, Diets, food, Food and drink, Gwyneth Paltrow, head, Herbert Hoover, Hospitality/Recreation, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Jonathan Safran Foer, Manhattan Borough, Mary, Meat, Meat substitutes, Meatless Monday, Michael Pollan, New York City, Paul McCartney, president, Scott Stringer, Stella, Tofurky, U.S. Food Administration, United Kingdom, USDA, Vegetarian cuisine, Vegetarianism