Meatless Mondays

Image courtesy of Make a Whisk

Meatless Mondays. Has a nice ring to it. Kind of like Wordless Wednesdays from one of the blogs I follow. Meatless Mondays is a non-profit initiative in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, determined to help reduce meat consumption by 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet. Endorsed by Paul McCartney and Michael Pollan, the campaign has achieved social status and reached our city leaders here in SF.


Recently, San Francisco supervisor Sophie Maxwell introduced this movement to the Board of Supervisors, who passed a resolution for the Bay Area to follow suit and try and reduce meat consumption on Mondays. This resolution is extending from home, to restaurants, and public schools to encourage vegetarian options for consumption on Mondays. Although it cannot be enforced, at least our political community is aware of the overconsumption of meat and the consequences it causes.  


The Meatless Mondays website gives some history on how our country has done this successfully in the past, during both world wars. Spearheaded by Herbert Hoover, during the World War, Americans living in New York City saved 116 tons of meat in one week. They passed out pamphlets and recipes, much like the MM website has done today. This campaign began in 2003 as an awareness campaign to help Americans reduce saturated fats and reduce the risk of preventable disease, like heart disease. 


The website also has an assortment of Recipes to try for all meals. Surely there is something in there for us all. I really like this idea and starting Monday, today, M and I are going to follow suit and not eat meat on Mondays. We have drastically cut our meat consumption over the past two years or so, but having a day set aside specifically for vegetarian meals is a good thing. It is also easy to plan for, and not easy to pass up since it is the beginning of the week. If it were meatless Thursdays, we could possibly end up going out for chinese food and having a hard time passing up green bean chicken.... 


So to all of you out there who might be up for a change, a healthy change, join us for Meatless Mondays next week.