Meatless Monday: What, Why and How to Enjoy it

Have you heard of Meatless Monday? Besides being a fun alliteration, Meatless Monday is a popular food movement and is growing as a trend worldwide. 

First, what is Meatless Monday? 

Essentially, Meatless Monday encourages individuals and families to eat a plant-based diet every Monday, by skipping out on eating meat and meat products. The reasons for skipping on meat focus on the health benefits, both the direct health benefit of not ingesting meat as well as the health benefits for the environment through the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and pollution related to the farming of animals for meat.

So, why Meatless Monday?

Meatless Monday was first established in the USA back during World War I as a wartime measure to cut back on the consumption of food staples, in particular meat. More recently, it was re-popularized in the early 2000s by Sid Lerner and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Lerner wanted to revive the day as a way of supporting a greater level of public health in the USA by raising awareness of the health risks of excessive meat consumption. Over the past decades Americans have progressively consumed more and more meat, with the average American eat as much as 75 pounds more meat each year than previous generations.

Eating less meat reduces the risk of disease and other chronic conditions, such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, as well as obesity. In addition, consuming less meat helps to reduce your carbon footprint, since plants based foods require much less water and fuels to produce. Eating less meat saves you money on your food costs, so that you can save for something special.

Since Lerner began promoting Meatless Monday in the USA, the movement has gone worldwide and there are now over 40 countries that officially participate in Meatless Monday.

So, what’s the best way to enjoy Meatless Monday?

If you spend anytime on Instagram or other social media you may have noticed that Mondays often include a lot of posts people share of their #MeatlessMonday meals. We recently started sharing some Meatless Monday inspiration on our Facebook page and on our Instagram account (and we blogged about some of our favorite Instagram accounts here). Visit our page for inspiration or to ask us for recommendations.

Fortunately, there are many fantastically delicious food bloggers and chefs that specialize in plant-based foods, some of them are among the most popular food bloggers worldwide! We highly recommend visiting Minimalist Baker’s blog, she shares simple, delicious, foolproof recipes covering breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert.

In addition we’ve got a few excellent recipes on our blog and we will be posting more. Check out our delicious cauliflower burgers (that meat eaters rave over!) and for breakfasts try our delicious smoothie bowls.

We would love to know what you make on Meatless Monday, so make sure you tag us on social media with #laespanola.