You’ve Probably Heard of it … Meatless Monday

You’ve probably heard of Meatless Mondays. But what is it? And why abstain from meat once a week?

Meatless Monday* is a global campaign that advises cutting meat from the diet each Monday. Did you know know that decreasing meat consumption - even just one day a week - has enormous benefits for our health, the environment and our animal friends. Let's take a closer look.

HEALTH: For each meatless meal you eat, you reduce your saturated fat intake by 15% and decrease your risk of heart disease by up to 19%. Eliminating meat once a week will also reduce your risk of breast, colon, prostate, kidney and pancreatic cancer.

ENVIRONMENT: The environmental benefits are also impressive. For each meatless meal you can save up to 133 gallons of water and 24 square feet of land. You can also reduce your carbon footprint by over 8 lbs a day (as much as not driving for 2 days) and save half a gallon of gasoline a day.

ANIMALS: Additionally, for each year you participate in Meatless Monday, you would save 28 land animals and 175 aquatic animals. If we all went Meatless one day a week, 1.6 billion fewer animal would suffer each year.

So, why Mondays? Mondays are seen as a fresh start, the beginning of the week, and there is an upsurge of healthy intentions on Mondays. People are more likely to start diets or quit smoking on Mondays. Staring healthy behaviors on Mondays makes us more likely to maintain those behaviors throughout the week. So, let’s do something important for our health and environment and make this Monday meatless.

With such amazing benefits and minimal effort, going meatless just one day a week is one of the easiest things we can do to improve our health and contribute to a meaningful cause. For recipe ideas, CLICK HERE. To learn more about Meatless Monday, sign up HERE. Are you on Facebook? JOIN Empowered by Plants for an opportunity to ask questions, receive support and connect with others on a similar journey.

*Marketing professional Sid Lerner founded it in 2003 in collaboration with the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for a Livable Future.