Meatless Monday: Reasons for Going Meatless One Day A Week

One Step At a Time...

You Can Go Meatless

For All Three Meals

The growing campaign for Meatless Monday encourages people to increase their intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes. Healthy related individuals are embracing it as a tool to promote healthful eating patterns.

What do Oprah Winfrey, Michael Pollan, and Mario Batali have in common? They’ve all jumped on the Meatless Monday bandwagon. Hospitals, colleges, restaurants, magazines, foodservice companies, workplaces, and entire communities are pledging their support for the program, too.

What’s Meatless Monday all about for those of you who are new to this principle. It’s a nonprofit initiative of The Monday Campaigns, which is developed in association with the Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health, with a simple message: By cutting out meat once per week, you can improve your health and reduce your carbon footprint. The initiative provides information and recipes to help people start each week with healthful, eco-friendly, meat-free alternatives.

Allison Righter, MSPH, RD, who coordinates the Meatless Monday science advisory at the Center for a Livable Future (CLF), reports that Meatless Monday began in 2003 in response to the release of the Healthy People 2010 report, which included goals to reduce dietary saturated fat by 15%. “Since saturated fat primarily comes from meat and animal products and since one day a week is just under 15% of the week, Meatless Monday was a practical method for helping people to meet those goals. Reducing meat consumption also has many other benefits, such as lowering the environmental burden of industrial food animal production, which is a major focus of CLF’s research,” Righter says.

Benefits Of Eating Meatless One Day Each Week

There is growing support for adopting a more plant-based diet, even in the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which offer the general recommendation to eat a plant-based diet that focuses on consuming vegetables, cooked dry beans and peas, fruits, whole grains, nuts, and seeds with moderate amounts of lean meats, poultry, eggs, and dairy.

A paper published by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics concluded that a plant-based, vegetarian dietary pattern is completely healthful and nutritionally adequate for people throughout all stages of life and that it has several health advantages, including lower blood cholesterol and pressure levels and lower risk of heart disease, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes.

Semivegetarian, lacto-vegetarian, and vegan women have a lower risk of overweight and obesity than do omnivorous women, according to data from 55,459 healthy women participating in the Swedish Mammography Cohort, suggesting that advice to consume more plant foods and less animal products may help individuals control their weight.

In a recent study, Harvard researchers linked high processed-meat intake to a 42% higher risk of coronary heart disease. Data from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, which included more than 440,000 participants, revealed that eating a daily 100-g serving of red meat was linked with a 19% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and eating a daily 50-g serving of processed meat was associated with a 51% greater risk.

The NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, which included more than 500,000 men and women, found a significantly higher risk of cancers of the colorectum, esophagus, lung, and liver associated with red meat intake; an increased risk of colorectal and lung cancer was associated with higher intake of processed meat; and red and processed meat intake was associated with cancer mortality.

The Meatless Monday message helps people ease into the concept of decreasing animal intake by selecting just one day per week to go meatless. The Meatless Movement is not asking people to cut out meat from the diet totally. It is all about moderation; it’s one simple tool to help people incorporate healthier—and also more environmentally sustainable—alternatives to meat into their diets just one day each week. It’s a platform to introduce new and often overlooked foods, and ideally this will trickle over into other days of the week and ultimately translate into healthier eating habits and dietary patterns over time.

The health benefits associated with vegetarianism go beyond simply having better eating habits. People who have been following a traditional vegetarian diet for many years may be healthier because they also tend to avoid or use less alcohol, caffeine and refined foods. They also tend to have other positive lifestyle habits including being more physically active, having less stressful lifestyles and being non-smokers.
The Meatless Monday movement has grown dramatically in the past two years.Meatless Monday also is growing with schools, colleges, food distributors, worksite wellness programs, and insurance companies. Meatless Mondays are being seen in communities, such as in Raleigh-Durham [North Carolina] and Aspen, Colorado, where community organizers go around and get schools, media, and events to support a community-wide endeavor. Meatless Monday can provide an opportunity for people to try new healthy recipes and new foods.
Start 2015 off by encouraging your family, friends and coworkers to jump on the Meatless Monday bandwagon and encourage all to take the ride for better health.

Healthy Meatless Recipe:

KALE, RED PEPPER AND GOAT CHEESE FRITTATA

(Adapted from Aggie's Kitchen)

This recipe is great when you are in a hurry and forgot to plan dinner. Hopefully, we will all try to eat a little healthier this new year.This frittata is like having breakfast for dinner.

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 1/4 milk
• 1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 large handful bagged chopped kale, chopped a bit more finely
• 2 ounces goat cheese
• 1 teaspoon of oil

Directions:

1. Preheat your broiler (use low if you have the option).
2. Add 1 teaspoon of oil to oven-proof 10 1/2 inch nonstick skillet, over medium heat. Add chopped red pepper and kale and saute for 5 minutes until vegetables are soft. Season with salt and pepper.
3. In a bowl, whisk together eggs and milk. Add egg and milk mixture to skillet. Let set for a minute. Using a spatula carefully begin to separate egg mixture from side of the pan, tilting pan while doing this so that egg mixture fills the space. Do this all around pan so that frittata cooks up evenly. Continue to do this until most of egg mixture is spread and only a small layer is left on top.
4. Spread crumbled goat cheese evenly to top of frittata. Place in oven under broiler and let cook for about 3-4 minutes, watching carefully. Let top of frittata cook completely and brown slightly.
5. Carefully (using a mitt!) take skillet out from oven. Let cool down for a couple of minutes. Slide frittata out onto a plate or cutting board and slice into quarters. Serve warm.
6. Serves 2, prep time 15 minutes

Enjoy and Bon Appetit!

Healthy Weekly Motivator

Remember Green Goes with Everything
A Healthier Environment, A Healthier You

We have all heard the saying, “You are what you eat.” But the same can be said of what you drink, what you breathe, and anything else you are exposed to. How healthy your environment is has a direct impact on your physical health, and nowhere is this more apparent than in your own home. One thing in your house that can affect your health is the air quality. On the back labels of many cleaners you will find safety warnings indicating that inhaling fumes from simple use of the product may be hazardous to your lungs. Some of these products include chemicals such as ammonia or chlorine bleach, which have been proven to cause shortness of breath and wheezing. The good news is that keeping your home clean without harming your family or the environment is easier than you might think. Making simple choices like switching products you use daily is just one way that you can create a healthy environment for your family to live in.

Contact LQ Wellness to see how you can create a healthier environment and a healthier you!

Have a great week and remember a better tomorrow starts with what you eat today!

Do you have a favorite meatless recipe you would like to share with us? Send it my way!

Wishing you health and wellness from the inside out,

Lisa

LQ WELLNESS

Professional Wellness Coach

973-383-0955

lisaquinnwc@embarqmail.com

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“If we are creating ourselves all the time, then it is never too late to begin creating the bodies we want instead of the ones we mistakenly assume we are stuck with.”

~Deepak Chopra~