Cut 15% of your saturated fat intake by going meatless just one day a week

Yesterday, I stumbled onto a pretty cute story: San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors just passed a resolution that declared every Monday as “meat-free.” It’s non-binding, so nobody actually has to follow it, but the hope is to encourage the city’s restaurants, schools, and grocery stores to try to offer more plant-based solutions, at least on that one day a week.

The idea came from an organization called “Meatless Monday,” a non-profit associated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which is urging Americans to reduce meat consumption by 15%, roughly equivalent to cutting out a day’s worth. It’s a move they say can have a huge impact on both our environment and our personal health.

According to Hopkins researchers, while Americans make up just 5% of the world’s population, we’re responsible for 15% of its meat consumption. The meat industry accounts for 1/5 of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, so that’s a big impact right there.

Further, by just cutting out 15% of your meat intake, you can seriously decrease your risk of obesity, heart disease, stroke, and cancer. The reason for those drops, the Hopkins scientists say, is that when you eliminate a day’s worth of meat, you’ll also be eliminating 15% of your saturated fat intake.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the whole “small change” thing since I re-read a study by the American Dietetic Association showing that most of us can prevent annual weight gain if we just cut out about 100 calories a day (something you can do by, say, making your lunch sandwich open-faced, or switching a single glass of juice, wine, or soda for a glass of sparkling water). I’m a huge believer in the 80% approach (to stick with the statistics theme here). Trying to do things too perfectly or cut out every guilty pleasure feels like such a sure path to stress and misery (a big health risk on its own); it seems to make more sense to do as good a job as you can, even if it’s just a little step forward.

Among those who follow Meatless Monday are Michael Pollan, Katie Lee Joel, Al Gore, Gwyenth Paltrow, Kate Moss, and Paul McCartney. Impressively, the whole Baltimore City Public School System along with a bunch of universities and individual secondary schools have managed to do this with their cafeteria menu. Some restaurants, among them Dovetail in New York, have created Monday night vegetarian menus around the concept. My guess is that there’s a bunch more stuff like this, not to mention good personal stories. (If you have them, I’d love to hear…)

Bottom line: I think coordinating this sort of movemnt is a really good way to raise awareness–for both the environmental and public health aspects. Next week, I’m definitely in for the count!