Denman Donderdag picked Thursday as a day of the week to encourage meatless meals here in our community, in concert with Ghent, Belgium (scroll down to the previous post all about that country's initiative).

Other places have picked different days and Monday is perhaps among the most popular. Of course, encouraging people to forego meat ONLY one day of the week is not the end goal of any meat-free campaign; but starting with just one day of the week does make a huge difference collectively, so it's definitely worth doing, even if you don't currently see yourself ever becoming a full-fledged vegetarian or vegan.

Here's an article that looks at the successful growth of the one day a week meatless campaign strategy. Check out some of the links on the right hand side of this page for recipe ideas!

http://calorielab.com/news/2011/03/14/meatless-monday/

How popular is Meatless Monday?

Meatless Monday is a health-and-environment initiative that asks consumers to avoid eating meat on Mondays. The nonprofit initiative, which has its own website at MeatlessMonday.com, comes from adman Sid Lerner of The Monday Campaigns in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The Meatless Monday campaign aims to mimic the voluntary meat-free meals that presidents Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman encouraged during WWI and WWII. Since we last covered Meatless Monday in 2009, schools in Baltimore and New York Cityadopted the initiative, and food-service provider Sodexo rolled out Meatless Mondays in its 900 hospital accounts. Harpo, Oprah Winfrey’s production company,instituted Meatless Mondays in its company cafeteria. Even celebrity chefs like Mario Batali and Wolfgang Puck have gotten into the act, adding Meatless Monday menu items in their restaurants.

Not everyone’s on board with Meatless Monday, however. Bowdoin College students staged a barbecue to protest the school’s choice to institute Meatless Monday at its dining facilities. Vegan Gary L. Francione spoke out against the initiative in an op-ed column, writing that it “reinforces the idea that animal flesh is morally distinguishable from other animal foods.” Francione would prefer a Vegan Day instead — one with an ultimate goal of going completely vegan.

Meatless Monday’s Online Popularity

From an adoption standpoint, Meatless Monday is doing pretty well. From a buzz standpoint, however, it’s exploded, especially over the past year. Consider the following Google Insights for Search graph, which tracks interest in Meatless Monday over time:

Google Insights for Search
	Gadgets powered by Google

Meatless Monday Semantics

The Meatless Monday initiative began in 2003, but it wasn’t until the third quarter of 2005 that Meatless Monday registered a blip on Google’s search tracking. Fast forward to 2009, and the initiative gained some steam. Note, however, the steep rise in Meatless Monday search popularity between December 2010 and the first three months of 2011. In the interest of being thorough: While the term “Meatless Mondays” was initially more popular than “Meatless Monday,” 2011 search trends dropped the plural and formally adopted the singular form of the phrase:

Google Insights for Search
	Gadgets powered by Google

Meatless Monday on Twitter

On Twitter, interest in Meatless Monday has also grown over the past year. Users tweet recipes of meat-free meals, share photos and swap strategies for getting kids involved. It’s even got its own hashtag, #meatlessmonday.

The following graphs from ReSearch.ly highlight tweets surrounding Meatless Monday and #meatlessmonday:

While Meatless Monday may never be universally adopted at the dining room table, Internet users and social media devotees are increasingly choosing to talk about Meatless Monday to their fans and followers. Have you embraced Meatless Monday in your own home?

(By Marissa Brassfield for CalorieLab)