First, Prince George’s County passed a “MeatOut Day” proclamation, urging residents to abstain from eating meat and consider the diverse alternatives available. The Council noted that “residents face a variety of chronic health conditions related to diet and the County Council is committed to improving the health of all of our residents.”

We’re also encouraged to “consider the health, humane and environmental benefits of a plant-based diet:” reduction in heart disease, weight loss, helping stop animal cruelty, and reducing the “severe environmental impacts of the meat industry…Meat and dairy products dump more animal waste, fertilizers, pesticides and other pollutants into our waterways than all other human activities combined.”

Greenbelt and other Cities Join In

Then the Greenbelt City Council proclaimed Greenbelt’s “First Annual” MeatOut Day, and the Cities of College Park, Laurel and Takoma park joined the campaign, too.

In celebration of the MeatOut, Food for Life instructor Geraldine Adams offered a vegan cooking demonstration at the Greenbelt Co-op.

How to Participate

In their Greenbelt News Review article, Barbara and Geraldine suggest:

Plan one plant-based breakfast, lunch and dinner to be ready for the challenge.  For breakfast, try some quick oatmeal with nut milk, diced apples and cinnamon. For lunch, try tacos or a taco salad made with beans, plant-based meat and cheese. For dinner, prepare a small salad with penne pasta in marinara sauce with tofu or chickpeas. tasty, nutritious and easy-to-make plant-based meals can be found at MeatOut.org or PCRM.org/recipes. And post your meals on your social media and tag them #MeatOut.

To learn a lot more about the benefits of a plant-based diet, watch “You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment Forks Over Knives,” now streaming on Netflix.

Plenty of Motivations to Choose From

Not every public awareness campaign is worth supporting and some even do more harm than good, but this one get my vote. The change in behavior seems short-lived and may actually be short-lived, but if even small numbers of people give it a try and end up making meatless meals a weekly habit, for instance, the campaign will have succeeded, in my book.

Vegans, vegetarians and meat-free-curious people have various motivations to choose from, or combinations thereof: concerns for animal welfare, the environment, and our own health – and in my case as a vegetarian who also eats seafood, it’s the first two. And it’s the environmental impacts of meat-eating that need to be more widely known.

So I’ll leave you with a couple of data points from “Why beef is bad for the planet”

• Emissions from meat and dairy make up around 14 percent of all global emissions, with 57 percent of food-related emissions coming just from meat.
• 77 percent of global farmland goes to raise livestock.

And take a gander at greenhouse emissions by protein source! This chart really got my attention.