Meatless Mondays Gains Momentum
What I like about Meatless Mondays  is that although they promote moving away from meat, they DON’T say give up meat altogether. They simply show that reducing your meat intake is healthier for both you and the planet. I like that.
It’s not dogmatic, and it’s a win-win. Meat producers still sell meat on the 6 other days, you and I aren’t pressured into becoming full-blown vegetarians (unless you want to be, of course), and the environment benefits from this.
What Does Meatless Monday do?
The program provides information and suggestions for healthy, eco friendly alternatives to meat — offering a free recipe widget, and even updates on which celebrities are followers of Meatless Mondays.
Followers exchange plant-based recipes on Facebook  and hospitals, schools and restaurants are promoting tasty meat-free alternatives.
Why?
The general consensus in most developed countries including the USA is that people need to cut back meat consumption by about 15% in order to eat more healthily. Cutting each meal by 15% can be tricky, but one day a week is easier, and more memorable.
Is Meatless Monday new?
I was interested to read that a meat-free Monday is an American tradition, going back almost a century – the federal government promoted the practice during World War I as well as II.
Meatless Mondays is now operational in 21 countries around the world, and according to a recent poll, it has reached 50 percent awareness in America.
Meatless Mondays and Me
I’ve been surprised – and impressed – at how easy it is to find really appetising and interesting vegetarian recipes for one meal a week. At home it’s easy with so many resources now, but even if I’m dining out, Indian restaurants make it incredibly easy – there are tons of wonderful veggie options. One of my favourites is Paneer Makhani (Indian goat’s cheese in a spicy pepper and tomato sauce – yum). Italian food is also no problem – pizzas (my personal favourite is a standard Margarita with added peppers, onions, zucchini and pineapple) and pastas with veggie and tomato sauces, with or without chilli.
I remember many years ago a dear friend of mine turned vegetarian for animal rights concerns. While I admired her hugely for her stance (and still do), I was in a panic as to what I could serve her for dinner.
I had this naïve idea at that time that vegetarian dinners involved only salads or boring rows of julienned veggies.
How silly was that! Â Check out Meatless Mondays at http://www.meatlessmonday.com/
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Meatless Monday’s are a great idea for those of us who are true carnivores but see the need to do a bit more for our animal population in general. One less meat dish per week for all meat eaters in the world must be quite a staggering number of animals world wide which don’t need to die just for us.