Mondays can be miserable, but if you’re in a decent enough mood, you can look at them as new beginnings, opportunities to get on track for the week. It’s like every seven days there’s a mini version of a New Year’s resolution. Enter the Meatless Monday campaign, recommending a resolution you only have to keep for a day!
It’s a non-profit initiative from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the goal of which is reducing meat consumption by 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.
The personal health benefits include reduced risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. The environmental benefits include reducing one’s carbon footprint, saving the fresh water and fossil fuels required for industrial meat production, and reducing toxic runoff from factory farms. The humane benefits… well, I’ve said plenty about those already.
The concept of meatless days isn’t new. Wilson, Truman and Roosevelt recommended voluntary meatless days during both world wars, albeit for different reasons. Now Paul McCartney’s campaigning for it in Europe, and San Francisco just approved a resolution endorsing it. The Huffington Post’s on board, too, with weekly guest columns and recipes. Of course, the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association are not big fans of the idea.
There are plenty of things I do exactly once a week. I brush the cats, I walk in the park with my friend Katherine, I make granola, I organize my desktop files. Now there’s something I don’t do once a week. Easy enough.
Have a great week.