Weekday vegetarian
Lifestyle gurus and minimalist bloggers are not dietitians, so I think you’d be correct to meet their dietary pointers with skepticism. Moreover, there’s little worse than being cornered by a tedious vegan at a party, extolling the virtues of nuts and seeds.
For these reasons, I don’t tend to promote my dietary choices, especially through this blog.
But here’s an interesting thing for your consideration: weekday vegetarianism.
Would the world not be a better place if everyone ate meat just once or twice a week while maintaining a vegetarian diet the rest of the time?
– Omnivores wouldn’t have to give up on meat but would enjoy much of the health and financial benefits enjoyed currently by vegetarians.
– Vegetarians subscribing to this omnivorous system would be able to eat meat or fish once a week, thus enjoying the health that they sometimes (unnecessarily) forsake.
– Fewer animals would be sacrificed to our stomachs, which would be a huge ecological boon even if you don’t care about the animals themselves.
Graham Hill from Treehugger.com says:
For your health, for your pocketbook, for the environment, for the animals, what’s stopping you from giving weekday veg a shot?
Here is Graham’s inspiring four-minute argument in favour of weekday vegetarianism:
About Robert Wringham
Robert Wringham is the editor of New Escapologist. He also writes books and articles. Read more at wringham.co.uk
In a similar vein, I’m a ‘home’ vegetarian.
I only cook vegetarian meals but if I’m visiting friends or out for a rare special meal at a restaurant, I don’t say no to meat. So that means I’m a vegetarian about 90% of the time, which works for me!
It’s about half-and-half for financial reasons / trying to lessen my impact on the earth. I think it’s a great option for those who want to be vegetarian but can’t quite commit.
There is also the fact that you eat chips every day.
But seriously, I think that it is your duty as an escapologist to extoll an escapological diet. It is no good having all the time in the world if you are going to be stupefied by eating shit. Also, doesn’t the circle of escape also apply to animals? Why should your freedom imply their imprisonment and slaughter?
Having said that, I completely agree with Anna that when your diet is within your control you should be vegetarian, but at friends’ and restaurants, it is nice to be able to make an exception.
Fortunately, I just don’t like meat. Never have. I only eat it if I’m in a social situation where it would be awkward to do otherwise. I make an exception in the case of mince though, which is just awful at any time. I buy most of my veg from a mate who has two allotments, this allows him to cover his costs and eat for free while I eat for very little. My latest coup was a bag of 50 fresh tomatoes grown down the road, costing me a pound!!! I’ve got a bucket of soup & a bucket of pasta sauce in the fridge!!! If you go seasonal you get the freshest, cheapest stuff…..perhaps we should all befriend our local allotment growers?
Is this a joke? Sure, it would be better,statistically, if everyone that wan’t already a vegan or vegetarian adopted this weekday veg plan but I think we have to ask ourselves why we would even try such a plan. If someone is considering this weekday veg plan because they don’t want to promote animal cruelty (over 99% of meat in the USA is factory farmed) or greenhouse gasses, water polution or vast amounts of animal shit, are they really going to be able to be proud of their actions when it comes to Saturday and they support the very thing they were fighting during the week. Hmmmm… Should we only act ethically monday through friday? I have seen some TED lectures and really thought some were great but they really must be running out of guest speakers.
“Vegetarians subscribing to this omnivorous system would be able to eat meat or fish once a week, thus enjoying the health that they sometimes (unnecessarily) forsake.”
Would be able to? It might be hard to understand, but we could actually eat meat RIGHT NOW if we wanted 😉
@Alex It’s not hard to understand. I’m vegetarian myself. My interests in posting this is to encourage omnivores to eat a little less meat: a more reasonable and potentially productive request than asking them to go vegetarian completely.
@Thomas As a full-time vegetarian, I’m inclined to agree that it would be difficult and strange to sacrifice one’s ethics on a weekly basis. I still think the proposal is a powerful one though. Asking omnivores to eat less meat is more reasonable than asking them to completely give it up. I suspect it would be met with less hostility than asking them to go cold turkey and would be easier for them to achieve.
I don’t know about all of you, but many people I know are “weekday vegetarians” out of necessity: who has time to whip up more than a bowl of pasta after coming home from work at 8pm? I’m almost on a weekday fast, plain and simple. (That aside, I’m an every day vegetarian and I can’t see why i’d want to eat meat on weekends or at any time; this concept is cute but why don’t we just say “hey guys, eat a little less meat, eh!”.)
Hi Alexandra. I agree absolutely. It’s just a way of formalising the request as a movement. But, yeah, on a daily basis we can just ask them to eat a little less meat. Definitely a step in the right direction and certainly less annoying than badgering them in the way that militant veggies do. Good point about the ease of making veggie food over meaty food too: the very thought of roasting a chicken seems like such an effort compared to a quick beansprout and pepper stir-fry. It’s cheaper too!
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[…] giving up meat completely seems a little too drastic, why not consider becoming a weekday vegetarian? That way, you get to save money during the week and eat less, but much better quality and more […]