Why more omnivores are going meatless on Monday

If you’re toying with the idea of eating less meat in the new year but unsure how to do it, meatless Monday could be just the ticket to getting you started and keeping you on track. The national movement encourages everyone to go meatless — cut the animal protein — one day a week for personal and global health.
Why Monday?

“Monday is kind of a new start, a call to action each week,” says registered dietitian Cindy Kleckner, who practices meatless Monday (meatlessmonday.com) and teaches classes that include meatless recipes and eating strategies at the Cooper Fitness Center at Craig Ranch in McKinney.

“It starts your week off with a clean diet,” says Jasmine Nicole Madison, a Dallas meatless Monday adherent and recent University of Minnesota graduate who works at Daltile. “I’ve always been into healthy eating, and I read about it two years ago, just random online, through different sites and blogs.”

Why meatless?

“It’s so important to add a lot of variety to your diet,” Kleckner says, “not to the exclusion of meat, but to incorporate more plant protein.” That increases your fiber and antioxidant intake, she says, and helps reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes and some cancers.

Meatless Monday is part of the Monday Campaigns (mondaycampaigns.org), a broad health initiative backed by several leading public health institutions.

Going meatless once a week also has environmental benefits. Plant protein requires vastly less fresh water and fossil fuels to produce than animal protein. The meatless Monday initiative’s goal is to cut meat consumption 15 percent.

You don’t have to be an environmental advocate to embrace meatless meals one day a week.

“It’s more about personal health for me,” says Lauren Douglas, who writes the Dallas Duo blog (dallasduo.blogspot.com) and stumbled upon meatless Monday while surfing the Internet. “I did a couple of them,” says the recent Texas A&M grad, who manages social media for Heritage Auctions. But her meat-loving husband doesn’t share her enthusiasm.

His reluctance hasn’t swayed her from the meatless message. “If I have a good recipe that doesn’t have meat, I put it on Duo,” she says.

That goes for the Pasta With Chickpea-Tomato Sauce she found on Martha Stewart’s website. “It got a little kick from red pepper flakes,” says Douglas, who tweaked it slightly. “I just loved it.”

“A lot of people know the nutrition,” Kleckner says. “They don’t know how to make it work for them. They need to know strategies. … People eat the same things over and over. This is an opportunity to try more things. I encourage them to try more foods they would otherwise pass up to be creative in the kitchen.”

One of the dietitian’s favorite meatless recipes is Butternut Squash Enchiladas, which she adapted from a restaurant dish.

Madison likes to dabble in veggie burger recipes. “They are so much better than the [premade patties] you buy at the store,” she says. She found her favorite, made with sweet potatoes, kidney beans, quinoa and sunflower seeds, on the Chalkboard blog (thechalkboardmag.com), which took it from Sasha Mitchell’s Kale With Love blog (kalewithlove.com).

“It’s not an apples-to-apples replacement for a burger,” Madison says, “and I don’t usually eat them on a bun. I like to eat them with hummus, sliced tomatoes and sliced avocado, and then a side of arugula with red wine vinegar and a little pepper. It mixes really well together.”