When it’s time to tell the meat to beat it…

Meat in general, and red meat and processed meat in particular, have been associated with so many health risks, that it’s very reasonable to want to reduce, if not outright eliminate, our meat consumption.

First, in case anyone’s wondering “what health risks?”

The aforementioned culprits tend to turn out to be a villain in the story of every second health-related thing we write about here. To name just a few:

• Processed Meat Consumption and the Risk of Cancer: A Critical Evaluation of the Constraints of Current Evidence from Epidemiological Studies
• Red Meat Consumption (Heme Iron Intake) and Risk for Diabetes and Comorbidities?
• Health Risks Associated with Meat Consumption: A Review of Epidemiological Studies
• Associations of Processed Meat, Unprocessed Red Meat, Poultry, or Fish Intake With Incident Cardiovascular Disease and All-Cause Mortality
• Meat consumption: Which are the current global risks? A review of recent (2010-2020) evidences

Seasoned subscribers will know that we rarely go more than a few days without recommending the very science-based Mediterranean Diet which studies find beneficial for almost everything we write about. The Mediterranean Diet isn’t vegetarian per se—by default it consists of mostly plants but does include some fish and a very small amount of meat from land animals. But even that can be improved upon:

• A Pesco-Mediterranean Diet With Intermittent Fasting
• Mediterranean, vegetarian and vegan diets as practical outtakes of EAS and ACC/AHA recommendations for lowering lipid profile
• A Mediterranean Low-Fat Vegan Diet to Improve Body Weight and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors: A Randomized, Cross-over Trial

So that’s the “why”; now for the “how”…

It’s said that with a big enough “why” you can always find a “how”, but let’s make things easy!

Meatless Mondays

One of the biggest barriers to many people skipping the meat is “what will we even eat?”

The idea of “Meatless Mondays” means that this question need only be answered once a week, and in doing that a few Mondays in a row, you’ll soon find you’re gradually building your repertoire of meatless meals, and finding it’s not so difficult after all.

Then you might want to expand to “meat only on the weekends”, for example.

Flexitarian

This can be met with derision, “Yes and I’m teetotal, apart from wine”, but there is a practical aspect here:

The idea is “I will choose vegetarian options, unless it’s really inconvenient for me to do so”, which wipes out any difficulty involved.

After doing this for a while, you might find that as you get more used to vegetarian stuff, it’s almost never inconvenient to eat vegetarian.

Then you might want to expand it to “I will choose vegan options, unless it’s really inconvenient for me to do so”

Like-for-like substitutions

Pretty much anything that can come from an animal, one can get a plant-based version of it nowadays. The healthiness (and cost!) of these substitutions can vary, but let’s face it, meat is neither the healthiest nor the cheapest thing out there these days either.

If you have the money and don’t fancy leaping to lentils and beans, this can be a very quick and easy zero-effort change-over. Then once you’re up and running, maybe you can—at your leisure—see what all the fuss is about when it comes to tasty recipes with lentils and beans!

That’s all we have time for today, but…

We’re thinking of doing a piece making your favorite recipes plant-based (how to pick the right substitutions so the meal still tastes and “feels” the same), so let us know if you’d like that? Feel free to mention your favorite foods/meals too, as that’ll help us know what there’s a market for!

You can do that by hitting reply to any of our emails, or using the handy feedback widget at the bottom!

Curious to know more while you wait?

Check out: The Vegan Diet: A Complete Guide for Beginners ← this is a well-sourced article from Healthline, who—just like us—like to tackle important health stuff in an easy-to-read, well-sourced format