New Year's Resolution: Meatless Monday

Happy Twenty Ten! I resolve to blog more this year, as I've been told that people do stumble upon this and some actually find it interesting. So I will aim to blog for at least once for month. There I said it.

But besides blogging, my biggest resolution in 2010 is "Meatless Monday", perhaps you've heard of it. This movement has actually been around for a while, but gained attention in 2009 when the Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS) decided on "Meatless Monday" starting last Fall. Of course this did not go off without protest. The meat industry (American Meat Institute) argued that BCPS were depriving the children of protein. This is not the case as there are many vegetarian sources of protein. And now some of the 80,000 kids of BCPS are trying out new vegetables, which is great since a recent CDC study reported that less than 10% of high schoolers eat the daily recommendations for plant foods. I personally tell patients to eat 5 different colors per day (and white is not a color). And, the meals offered on Mondays now are lower in cholesterol and saturated fats, also great since childhood obesity and childhood type II (adult-onset) diabetes are on the rise.

Meatless Mondays actually started in the US during World War I when Americans were conserving food to ensure food supply. This idea carried onto World War II, but then disappeared till 2003. The Center for a Livable Future (a division of the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) revived "Meatless Monday" after the release in 2000 of "Healthy People 2010" to reduce the consumption of saturated fat by 15% by 2010. Well, it's 2010, and I am just now jumping on this bandwagon! Better late than never, right?

My reasons for Meatless Mondays are simple - it's better for the environment and it's better for my health.

The following is from PRWeb with figures from factory-raised meat. The numbers are different with grassfed, non CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) meat:

• The meat industry generates nearly 1/5 of man-made greenhouse gasses that are accelerating climate changes - more so than transportation.
• About 40 calories of fossil fuel energy go into every calorie of feedlot beef in the US, compared to the 2.2 calories of energy needed to produce one calorie of plant-based protein.
• About 634 gallons of fresh water are required to produce one 5.2 ounce hamburger (a 4-hour shower) versus 143 gallons for the same amount of tofu.
• 2/3 of Americans are overweight and studies show that individuals on vegetarian or low-meat diets have significantly lower BMIs (body mass index) and lower body weights.
• Chronic preventable conditions like heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer kill 1.7 million Americans each year, 70% of all deaths in the U.S. Diets abundant in red and processed meats have been linked to increased cancer risk, especially of the digestive tract; while diets high in fruits, vegetables and whole grains may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

There is so much information out there and the Meatless Monday website is a great place to start. This website has health tips, recipe ideas, articles, and more. I had mentioned the differences between CAFO meat and grassfed meat, and that is another discussion on its own. I'll blog more on that next time. Until then I'll quote food hero Michael Pollan when he was on Oprah in April 2009:

Even one meatless day a week - a meatless Monday, which is what we do in our household - if everybody in America did that, that would be the equivalent of taking 20 million mid-size sedans off the road.

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