One way to start your vegan journey is to eat like a vegan one day a week. That way you get a chance to taste some delicious meat-free dishes without the stress of going vegan cold turkey, to turn a phrase. As you slowly move away from animal products in your diet, you’ll discover you may find you don’t need meat, dairy, and eggs to satisfy your hunger.
Contrary to many people’s belief that eating meat makes you strong and powerful, think about the mammals who are vegan every day of the week. The top ten vegan animals, as listed by “Vegan Souls” are:
Elephant
Rhinoceros
Hippopotamus
Bison
Wildebeest
Horse
Manatee
Some whales
Deer
Yak
Even gorillas are mostly vegetarian, though they like to snack on bugs now and then. Don’t assume we’re advocating that you adopt the same diet as any of the above creatures – there are many websites explaining why human anatomy is different than theirs. We’re just pointing out they don’t need meat to survive and to grow big and strong.
“Meatless Mondays” is a movement with roots back to the first World War, when avoiding meat on Mondays was considered a way to conserve resources for the war effort. Revived in 2003 by Sid Lerner, in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for a Livable Future, Meatless Mondays is also widely promoted by famous vegan Paul McCartney. The Meatless Mondays website claims that the movement is active 44 countries as diverse as Iran, Korea, and Jamaica.
The Dutch documentary “Meat the Truth” encourages us to go vegan once a week to save the planet. A Huffington Post review of the movie summed up the results: “If all Americans did not eat meat for one day a week, they would save 99.6 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions. This would be the equivalent of removing 46 million round trip flights between Los Angeles and New York, or taking 19.2 million cars off the road for a full year.”
Here in central Ohio, Whole Foods offers meatless dishes every Monday night from 4-7pm for $8.00. Watch our “Socially Just Dining” column for special Vegan Meetup Meatless Monday events. Check out the Meatless Mondays website for meatless recipes.
