Instead of “Meatless Monday,” I’m celebrating “Meat-Filled Monday”
The depths taken by those who promote a vegetarian and vegan lifestyle to push their nutritional beliefs on our culture never ceases to amaze me. What’s most amazing about this movement is how the campaign against meat consumption isn’t even subtle anymore (like requiring higher health insurance premiums for meat consumers, engaging in periodic “Meatout” events, and accusing meat eaters of “cannibalism”) — they just put it out there blatantly as if shunning healthy animal-based foods is somehow natural, normal, and necessary. While I don’t have an issue with someone giving up meat for whatever their personal reasons, demanding that others join them in this endeavor lest they be deemed somehow less caring about animals or the environment is utterly reprehensible. That’s what makes the emerging concept of “Meatless Monday” so particularly insidious.
Created by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, their stated goal with their “Meatless Monday” campaign is to “help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.” The web site provides “healthy, environmentally friendly meat-free alternatives” to beef, chicken, lamb, fish, and every other meat and cite former U.S. presidents during times of war who promoted “voluntary meatless days” as their precedent. Organizers believe this return to the glory days from our nation’s history will change the world in 2010.
By reviving this American tradition we can help address the challenges we face today. We can improve our health, reduce our carbon footprint and lead the world in the race to mitigate climate change.
Oh brother! We keep hearing ideas like eating red meat will kill you, consuming an “Eco-Atkins” diet is preferred to reduce greenhouse emissions, and meat-eating blamed for global warming. Sensationalistic and hyperbolic, but 100% dead wrong! Why are these kind of idiotic ideas allowed to penetrate the mainstream of our culture when none of them are based on reality nor are they supported by the vast majority of the population? I have a fascinating interview on my podcast show coming February 15, 2010 with a former 20-year vegetarian named Lierre Keith who wrote a fabulous book entitled The Vegetarian Myth which addresses all of these fallacies about meatless eating head-on. You WON’T want to miss that one!
These vegetarians say ditching the meat in your diet is so good for your health and the environment, but their goal isn’t just for Mondays. Their ultimate aim is to remove meat from your diet altogether to allegedly reduce heart disease risks, maintain your weight, improve the quality of your diet (by removing those nasty “artery-clogging” saturated fats), save the planet and so much more! It’s a conniving attempt at guilt-tripping people into thinking they are doing something good not just for themselves but for mankind. What’s worse, this has already been adopted as a policy by the Baltimore public school system whether the children or their parents like it or not! Now they’ve gone too far!
All of this has inspired me into taking some action myself.
Rather than having a “Meatless Monday,” how about those of us who support high-fat, low-carb nutrition for weight and health management begin celebrating something I’m calling “Meat-Filled Monday” instead? Since the vegetarian groups think everybody should give up meat at the beginning of each week, then there should be plenty of meat available to consume if you want to take appropriate measures to lose weight, improve heart health, raise your HDL cholesterol, lower your triglycerides, decrease your blood pressure, lower blood sugar and insulin levels to metabolically “cure” Type 2 diabetes without the use of prescription medications, reduce inflammation, prevent cancer, including prostate cancer…the list goes on and on!
I detail much of the most recent research showing health improvements that come from a high-fat, moderate-protein, low-carb “Meat-Filled” diet in my latest book 21 Life Lessons From Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb because too often the focus on low-carb diets that include liberal amounts of meat is on the weight loss. But low-carb living is about so much more than that! It truly is a healthy way of eating that will transform your body into performing at its optimal level while allowing you to enjoy delicious and nutritious foods that taste great and make you feel extraordinary. Yes, Virginia, meat IS good for you no matter what you’ve heard from the propagandist anti-meat groups (who I dedicated an entire chapter of my new book about).
Engaging in a “Meatless Monday” does not afford you these amazing benefits, so I encourage you to engage in a “Meat-Filled Monday” as a better alternative. What’s incredibly ironic about what the vegetarians are doing is that they have chosen not to eat meat on ANY day of the week already. So this doesn’t impact their lifestyle one iota. This entire concept is meant to prosthelytize others into becoming vegetarians. That’s the bottom line goal of the “Meatless Monday” and quite frankly it ain’t gonna work. Depriving people of the animal fats their bodies crave is unnatural, abnormal, and unnecessary.
Won’t you celebrate “Meat-Filled Monday” with me?
