mmm. delicious...
Why?
I must admit, I am a
meataterian - a fact that is going to make this first week all that more challenging. I'm a strict believer in the Wisdom of Homer when he states
"You don't win friends with salad!
That said, there are health benefits of eating vegetarian, but it's never been compelling enough to do a complete 180 as far as my diet goes, even if it's just for a week. I just enjoy a good steak a little too much to deny myself the pleasure.
So why am I doing this then?
I've been more conscious of my eco-footprint for the past few years. Making more of an effort to use public transportation more often, or walk, or ride my bike, instead of driving. I've always been pretty good at recycling, and have attempted to buy local when available.
I think my efforts over the past couple of years have been pretty good, but a couple of months ago I took the
ecological footprint quiz and although
my results were mostly below the national average, my food footprint was well above average. The reason: I just eat too much meat!
Seeing as I'm not willing to cut meat out of my diet all together, I figured the next best thing (obviously) would be to eat less meat. I could just do smaller portions, but it would just be too easy to fall back into my regular eating habits. We could pick a day and do "no meat" for a day, but that's just too easy, and too easy to skip/cheat. We settled on doing one week each month with NO MEAT.
One week a month will work out to roughly 25% of the year. I think that's a sizable enough chunk of vegetarianism to take advantage of some of the health benefits AND reduce my eco-footprint. To tell you the truth, I'm pretty excited for the challenge.
Famous last words? We'll know soon enough! Week 1 starts now!
