Foodprints for the Future

April 22nd is exactly 2 months down the road. For those of us who are more fans of spring weather than the winter chill, this is beyond exciting. However, for those of us who are environmentalists, we know that April 22nd marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, where the real excitement lies!

To get us in the mood for that, Earth Day Network has created this "Foodprints for the Future." We all know what a "footprint" is, but what's a "foodprint?" From their website:

"A foodprint measures the environmental impacts associated with the growing, producing, transporting, and storing of our food— from the natural resources consumed to the pollution produced to the greenhouse gases emitted."

To learn more about footprints and the merits and health benefits of a plant-based diet, check out the mini movie Earth Day Network created. It does a great job of doing some myth busting about moving to a more plant-based diet...and may inspire you to throw in a few more meatless meals into your meal planning!

To learn more, check out Earth Day Network's "Foodprints for the Future" website. You can also learn more about our food impact (including food waste), their projects, and tips on what you can do.
 Don't forget to check out their wealth of resources (including infographics, articles, and calculators).



Video from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Etpk74K_lU&feature=emb_logo ; Images from https://theworldlink.com/community/bandon/entertainment/earth-day-event-to-celebrate-years/article_bce1482f-df82-55b3-9a5c-02d183b9b52b.html and https://www.earthday.org/campaign/foodprints-for-future/

Climatarian Diet

I always love a good infographic. This fun one entitled "The Climatarian Diet" was created by Emiliy Ehlers (also known as "Eco With Em"). You can find her on Instagram (where she has 33K followers and it is her most active platform) as well as Facebook and Twitter . Her Instagram account is chock-filled with more like this!

You can also catch a listen of her on episode 19 of the podcast "Simply Complicated with Katie Dean."

Image from https://www.instagram.com/ecowithem_/

Meatless Mondays, Part Deux

Continuing our conversation....

Whether you call it Meatless Mondays, Weekday Vegetarianism, or Flexitarianism, switching up how you eat in order to try to reduce your meat intake is a trend these days. In some circles, it's seen a trend among millennial for 2018--especially when it comes to "plant-based meat alternatives."

It's not a new concept, and in fact, there are resources galore on the subject on the web.  Some fingers (like Peggy Neu, in the TEDxManhattan video below) point back to the rationing Americans (and Europeans) did during World War II. Items like meat, cheese, butter, cooking oil, processed food, and more were rationed, making it necessary to get a little more creative in the kitchen.


Here's a multitude of resources to "make Monday the day all health breaks loose:"

• Meatless Mondays, from the non-profit Monday Campaigns and the Center for a Livable Future (CLF) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Here you will find resources for a variety of perspectives: restaurants, K-12 schools, hospitals, food service, campus, community, and corporate dining. Included here are implementation guides, free resources, and recipes.

• The Greenpeace Less Is More Movement. FoodTank details the specifics of Greenpeace's report here, including a recommendation for a 50% reduction in meat dairy by 2050. The Less Is More website does a nice job of detailing the planetary effects of eating less meat to climate change, forests, water, health, animal welfare, and fair food... as well as ways to take action.

• The Humane Society has toolkits for K-12 schools, parents, universities/colleges, and hospitals on ways to implement meatless game plans into each of these locations. (This is also where the "What Is Meatless Monday" video came from that I posted in "Flexitarians, Unite.")

• Earth Day Network made Meatless Mondays one of their 2018 "Taking Action" points for Earth Day 2018. There, you can get some key points as well as a pledge to help you deepen your commitment.

For anyone looking to lighten your meat intake, here's a list of places to find all sorts of recipes:

• Cooking Light: Our Best Meatless Monday Recipes For Fall

• Eating Well:  Meatless Monday: Healthy Vegetarian Recipes You Must Try

• Meatless Monday's Website's Recipe Portal

• Bon Appétit: 35 Weeknight Vegetarian Recipes to Embrace Meatless Mondays 

• Damn Delicious: 15 Quick & Easy Meatless Monday Recipes

• Kitchn.com: 23 Vegetarian Dinners To Make Meatless Mondays Even Easier

• It's even an entire Pinterest category--just search there for "Meatless Mondays"

At the very least, it gets us in the mode of thinking about eating a little lighter, in healthy ways, in ways that help our our planet.

Images from https://www.geneseo.edu/cas/meatless-mondays, http://www.familycounselling.com/wanting-eat-healthier-try-meatless-mondays; Video from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPkV1bDZDl4

Flexitarians, Unite!

I am an unapologetic carnivore... which I know, goes against my environmentalistic ideals. But I can't help it. I do like a good steak. Also, I tend to just feel better when I focus on protein versus carbs. Granted, I know their are some vegetable-based proteins out there, but eggs, bone broth, and/or cheese best satisfy my breakfast needs to maintain my energy levels for the day... not to mention having animal protein during my other meals of the day.

Despite all of that, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the concept of "Meatless Mondays" or "Weekday Vegetarianism." Sometimes, this can be referred to as being a "Flexitarian." In fact, I was quite surprised at the number of resources on the subject I had stockpiled! It was a lot of "food for thought!" 😋

In case you are still wondering "What are Meatless Mondays?"--it's just what it sounds like. Here's a brief video from The Humane Society to explain it in more depth.


As this video shows (and the website does too), there are a lot of environmental impacts that could be had if all of us reduced our meat consumption by just one... or a few... days. Therefore, it's a worthy venture from an environmental standpoint to pursue.

Graham Hill has some good points here in his 2010 TEDTalk below, many of which mirror my still-carnivorous self. Graham poses the solution need not be a one-sided, binary, either-or situation of being meat-eater or not. He poses a 3rd option: "weekday vegetarian." Going "meatless on Mondays" poses a 4th. I don't think I'm at all ready to go full-on meatless 4 or 5 days a week, but maybe I could be a bit of a flexitarian. Could I do Mondays, or any one day a week?  Maybe. Or even: could I go 1 meal less a week?  Definitely! By looking at it fractionally on an individual level, we could potentially go make exponential growth on a societal level. It's worth thinking about.

Stay tuned for Part 2 (coming soon) for some more resources and recipes to try out to see if you are inspired to go meatless a meal or two (or even a day or two) a week.

Images from: https://steemkr.com/vegetarian/@donniechong/why-becoming-a-vegetarian, https://cindytherd.com/2017/11/10/flexitarian-diet-and-the-research-behind-it/
Videos from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpziz8cJMaI and https://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian#t-225071