Sustainable Living & Sustainable Lifestyle
Learn about the Meatless Monday movement and how it can improve your health and help the Earth!
Learn about the Meatless Monday movement and how it can improve your health and help the Earth!
Why Meatless Monday? Monday is the beginning of the week, when people are getting back into their weekly routine. Over the weekend, we all tend to relax and get into unhealthy habits such as breaking our diet pattern or eating a bit more junk food. On Monday those unhealthy habits can be forgotten and replaced by positive ones. A Meatless Monday serves as a reminder to renew healthy habits and encourages you to follow through the whole week with healthy diet and physical exercises.
Going meatless once a week has a lot of health benefits. It can help reduce your risk of multiple diseases and conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and even obesity. A meatless Monday helps improve your overall diet. When you eat less meat and more vegetables such as beans or peas, you are giving your body less saturated fat and more fiber, protein, and other necessary vitamins. This will lead to a longer, healthier and happier life.
Reduce cancer risk: Many studies show that diets high in fruits and vegetables vs. red and processed meat can help reduce cancer risks, especially colon cancer.
Reduce heart disease: Recent studies found that replacing meat and full fat dairy with nuts, seeds and vegetable oils can reduce the risk of heart disease.
Prevent diabetes: Research indicates that eating less red and processed meat reduces the risk of diabetes.
Control obesity: A recent study found that being on low-meat or vegetarian diets can prevent long-term weight gain and keep your body mass indices in a healthy range.
Going meatless once a week has a lot of environmental benefits. It takes a lot of resources such as fresh water, fossil fuels, and oil and gas to cut, process, refrigerate and transport meat. A meatless Monday can help reduce your carbon footprint and save Earth’s precious resources. It also reduces the need of dependency on foreign oil and energy production.
Reduce your carbon footprint: It is estimated that the meat industry generates about 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. Not eating meat once a week can help reduce your carbon footprint and slow down global warming.
Conserve precious water: Raising livestock needs a lot more water than growing vegetables and grains. It is estimated that on average, about 2,200 gallons of water are needed to produce one pound of beef when only 10% of that amount is needed to produce one pound of soy tofu.
Reduce fossil fuel consumption: On average, the amount of fossil fuel energy going into producing meat is 18 times more than the amount of fossil fuel energy needed to produce plant-based protein. Reducing meat consumption can greatly help cut fossil fuel consumptions.
Going meatless Monday encourages you to make healthier decisions at the start of every week. But going meatless Monday is only a start. Adding environmentally friendly meat-free alternatives to your diet will help the Mother Earth as well. If you decide to eat meat on other days, using hormone-free, locally raised options whenever possible is better for your health and the environment. For your meatless Monday, using locally grown fruits and vegetables will also help cut down on fuel for transportation and reduce your carbon foot print. Thousands of people from all over the world have joined the Meatless Monday movement. Will you have the courage to make a new diet resolution?
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