If you are interested in cutting back but aren’t quite sure where to start, why not try “Meatless Monday”? Simply put, Meatless Monday involves skipping meat for just one day a week in favour of a plant-based day.
Why Monday? Because it helps you start off the week on a strong note and your willpower to start new habits is still strong. An added bonus to starting Meatless Monday’s each week, some claim they eat more fruits, vegetables and plant-based meals throughout the rest of the week… bonus!
So here’s 3 reasons why you should try Meatless Monday
Diversity in Your Diet is Important
No single food contains all the necessary nutrients for overall health and wellness, so it’s important to eat a colourful and varied diet to ensure that you get adequate amounts of all essential nutrients your body and brain needs.
Consuming a diverse diet can reduce inflammation, which is important to prevent chronic diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. It also ensures a healthy gut microbiome, which we are only beginning to learn the importance of.
This gives us so much freedom to try any and every plant-based food out there and really have fun with experimenting.
Mitigating the Environmental Impact of Meat
It is not yet understood the full impact it would have on the world if everyone ate a fully plant-based diet. We do however know that reducing our reliance on animals is important.
People often talk about the expectation that everyone should be going vegan and eliminating our reliance on animals completely, but even a shift to a “flexitarian” diet can have a huge impact on our health and the climate problem.
Experimenting With New Ingredients and Recipes
We often think of taking something away that we love (like meat) a loss, but in truth, we often forget to think about all the things we are gaining (like better health). We do not believe in restriction, we believe in crowding out the bad with the good. What do we mean by this? Basically, eating more healthy plants, making there less room for factory farmed meats and dairy.
Thankfully, Hong Kong has plenty of restaurants that are not only vegetarian and vegan but more and more mainstream restaurants are serving vegan options on their menus like Thai Chiu and Chilli Fagara.
If you love to cook, you can also prepare your favourite meat dish with a meatless alternative, like Beyond Burger or Omnipork that looks, cooks and tastes just like their living counterparts.
For some Meatless Monday inspiration, follow 8Shades on Instagram where we’ll be sharing some meatless inspo!
