At one point, Meatless Monday — a fun meal-planning activity that moves meat off the menu just one day a week — was a novel idea. Today, however, 40 countries around the world practice this campaign and plant power has been extending to other days of the week as well.
The Meatless Monday movement spread faster than balsamic vinegar on a paper towel for good reason: People around the world are recognizing the personal health and environmental benefits to reducing overall meat consumption and production. Countless studies show that a diet that emphasizes a variety of foods — including plant-based proteins such as tofu, soy, beans, legumes and nuts — reduces health risks.
[See: 7 Reasons to Choose a Plant-Based Diet.]
But despite increasing awareness of the benefits of welcoming plants to the plate, the trend was recently threatened by Joni Ernst, a freshman senator from Iowa. Her goal? To enact legislation that would remove Meatless Monday from military menus, suggesting that soldiers and military personnel would not be able to meet protein needs if they cut out meat one day a week.
What’s more, Rep. Adrian Smith, a Nebraska Republican, one of the meat industry’s closest Congressional allies, offered an amendment to ensure meat remains a dietary option for U.S. troops by prohibiting the U.S. Department of Defense from excluding meat from its food service program manual. The amendment passed the House.
The biggest problem here is not whether meat should or should not be a part of the diet fed to members of our military, but rather that the meaning of the Meatless Monday campaign has been misunderstood. Even worse, the goal of keeping our men and women in our armed forces healthy has been trumped by incomplete, incorrect information. Here are the facts:
1. Meatless Monday isn’t the same as meatless all day, every day.
The Meatless Monday campaign does not advocate for the exclusion of meat from individuals’ diets. Its intent is to encourage people to increase the amount of vegetable-based protein they eat in order to help prevent chronic disease, improve long-term health and contribute to more sustainable food production practices. And it just so happens that our Government feels the same way.
2. Our dietary guidelines recommend reducing meat intake.
Our own 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which is revised and approved every five years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recommends that people who consume 2,000 calories per day eat just 5.5 ounces of “protein equivalent foods.” To reiterate, that’s 5.5 ounces per day. As a frame of reference, three ounces looks like a deck of cards. It’s plain to see that 5.5 ounces is a fraction of the amount of meat many of us actually consume at one meal, let alone a full day.
[See: 5 Unintended Consequences of Eating Too Much Protein.]
3. You don’t have to eat meat to get sufficient protein.
According to these guidelines, protein needs can and should be adequately met with a variety of foods, including plant-based proteins such eggs, tofu and soy products, beans, legumes and nuts. As an example, just one ounce of almonds provides six grams of protein — about the same amount that you’d find in one ounce of meat. As a plant protein, however, almonds have no cholesterol, are a good source of fiber and contain mostly heart-healthy monounsaturated fat — all positive attributes that cannot be said about meat.
As Sid Lerner, founder of Meatless Monday, pointed out in correspondence from his campaign, “We encourage the U.S. military to offer and promote vegetable-based protein options on their menus every Monday, but we also recognize that military personnel could choose meat as well.” The recommendation is for both options to be available to them.
[See: What’s Really in Those Meatless Meats?]
It seems that Meatless Monday and the U.S. military actually have a lot in common: Both care about protecting our planet and the people who live on it. Perhaps it’s time to give peas a chance.
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In Defense of Meatless Monday originally appeared on usnews.com
