Meatless Monday

Meatless Monday is an international campaign that encourages people to not eat meat on Mondays to improve their health and the health of the planet.

Meatless Monday is a non-profit initiative of The Monday Campaigns Inc. in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for a Livable Future. Meatless Monday was founded in 2003 by marketing professional Sid Lerner. The program follows the nutrition guidelines developed by the USDA. Meatless Monday is part of the Healthy Monday initiative. Healthy Monday encourages Americans to make healthier decisions at the start of every week. Other Healthy Monday campaigns include: The Kids Cook Monday, Monday 2000, Quit and Stay Quit Monday, Move it Monday, The Monday Mile, and others.

Meatless Monday focuses its initiative on Mondays for several reasons. Friday is traditionally already a meat-free day among Catholics and Orthodox. Monday is typically the beginning of the work week, the day when individuals settle back into their weekly routine. Habits that prevailed over the weekend can be forgotten and replaced by other choices. A weekly reminder to restart healthy habits also encourages success. A 2009 trial published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine provided individuals with weekly health prompts and encouragement. Approximately two thirds of participants responded with improvements in their overall health, eating habits and physical activity levels.

During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation calling for every Tuesday to be meatless and for one meatless meal to be observed every day, for a total of nine meatless meals each week. The United States Food Administration (USFA) urged families to reduce consumption of key staples to help the war effort and avoid rationing. Conserving food would support U.S. troops as well as feed populations in Europe where food production and distribution had been disrupted by war. To encourage voluntary rationing, the USFA created the slogan “Food Will Win the War” and coined the terms "Meatless Tuesday" and "Wheatless Wednesday” to remind Americans to reduce intake of those products.

...
Wikipedia