Meatless Monday: A Campaign Rooted in Public Health

April 15th, 2010
Meatless Monday: A Campaign Rooted in Public Health

Wellness Corner at The Johns Hopkins Hospital's Cobblestone Cafe
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health embraced the Meatless Monday campaign back in 2003, and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future has proudly served as the national campaign’s scientific advisor ever since. Today I welcome and laud The Johns Hopkins Hospital for launching its own Meatless Monday campaign. In an effort to promote the health benefits of eating more grains, fruits and vegetables the “Wellness Corner” in the Hospital’s main cafeteria is cutting out meat and serving only vegetarian options on Mondays. (Meat options will still be available in other parts of the cafeteria.) The national Meatless Monday campaign’s primary focus is to reduce the consumption of saturated fat by 15%, following the recommendations of the Healthy People 2010 report issued by then U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher in 2000.
Health professionals have long recommended Americans eat less meat and increase their intake of fruits, vegetables and grains, but it hasn’t always been a popular idea. It wasn’t until Americans began to gain a deeper understanding of the intricate connections between the types of foods we eat and how they can affect our health that the message of moderation has begun to slowly take hold in the American culture. What makes Meatless Monday so palatable is its clear, simple and inclusive message of cutting meat out of your diet just one day a week. The campaign is embraced by a large spectrum of people, groups and organizations. They include: people interested in improving their health and the health of the planet, doctors, nutritionists, activists, advocates, celebrated meat-eaters, earnest vegetarians, chefs, scientists, journalists, hospitals, food service providers, colleges, universities, school districts and entire cities.

Meatless Monday’s recent spike in popularity may be attributed to a greater awareness of our dwindling natural resources and increased environmental degradation due to all types of industry including industrial farm animal production. Research by the United Nations, which some animal agriculture industry supported scientists recently claimed may overstate its findings, revealed that meat production contributes significantly to anthropogenic greenhouse gases, 18% globally. Center for a Livable Future (CLF) doctoral student Jillian Fry responded to one of the report’s loudest critics, UC Davis Professor Frank Mitloehner, pointing out that many of Mitloehner’s claims were unsupported by his own published findings. You might recall, I wrote about the issue on the Livable Future Blog last year, long before the meat industry funded report came out. With the help of CLF researcher Brent Kim, I pointed out that the global percentage of GHG is not comparable to the percentage of GHGs produced by livestock in the U.S. Even critics admit, however, that livestock production is responsible for a significant amount of GHGs.

Regardless of the latest media spin, it’s important to remember that the Meatless Monday campaign is rooted in the idea of improving public health. Even the U.S. Department of Agriculture recognizes that people are eating more meat than they need. The latest USDA statistics show that men in the U.S. consume as much as 190% of their recommended daily allowance of protein while women eat as much as 160%. Americans derive the majority of their protein from meat and other animal sources.

What I find so great about The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Meatless Monday campaign is its focus on the health benefits of reducing meat consumption and the presentation and taste of the food itself.


Meatless Monday Entrees Served at Wellness Corner
Every Monday for the next few weeks Johns Hopkins Hospital dietitians are making themselves available to answer cafeteria customers’ questions about the Meatless Monday campaign and how cutting meat out of their diet one day a week can be beneficial to their health. They’re also making sure that they’re able to choose the healthiest food substitutes.



The Johns Hopkins Hospital Clinical Dietitians Answering Questions at Meatless Monday Kickoff
Executive Chef Shawn Fields had a great time coming up with new tasty recipes for the campaign. He says it’s important for customers to know, “that they’re not sacrificing taste by eating vegetarian meals.” He also has a great sense of humor. A promotional poster designed for the campaign offers a quote from Chef Fields saying, “If you think chili needs meat, you don’t know beans.”



Executive Chef Shawn Fields

People think "power… oh, that's bad." But powerlessness...that's really bad!

People think "power… oh, that's bad." But powerlessness, that's really bad!
— Margaret Moore, Citizen Organizer, Fort Worth, Texas, 1992

A Massachusetts teacher I once knew asked his tenth graders to blurt out the first words that came to mind on hearing the word "power." They said, "money," "parents," "guns," "bullies," "Adolf Hitler," and "Mike Tyson." And in my workshops with adults, I've heard similar words, plus "fist," "law," "corrupt," and "politicians." Often "men" pops out, too.

As long as we conceive of power as the capacity to exert one's will over another, it is something to be wary of. Power can manipulate, coerce, and destroy. And as long as we are convinced we have none, power will always look negative. Even esteemed journalist Bill Moyers recently reinforced a view of power as categorically negative. "The further you get from power," he said, "the closer you get to the truth."

But power means simply our capacity to act. "Power is necessary to produce the changes I want in my community," Margaret Moore of Allied Communities of Tarrant (ACT) in Fort Worth, Texas — my hometown — told me. I've found many Americans returning power to its original meaning — "to be able." From this lens, we each have power — often much more power than we think.


One Choice We Don't Have

In fact, we have no choice about whether to be world changers. If we accept ecology's insights that we exist in densely woven networks, as just noted, then we must also accept that every choice we make sends out ripples, even if we're not consciously choosing. So the choice we have is not whether, but only how, we change the world. All this means that public life is not simply what officials and other "big shots" have.

Related evidence of our power is so obvious it is often overlooked.

Human beings show up in radically different notches on the "ethical scale" depending on the culture in which we live. In Japan, "only" 15 percent of men beat their spouses. In many other countries, over half do. The murder rate in the United States is four times higher than in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan.

Plus, behavior can change quickly. Germany moved from a country in which millions of its citizens went along with mass murder to become in a single generation one of the world's more respected nations. Here's an incomparably less consequential but still telling example: In only a decade, 1992 to 2002, U.S. high school students who admitted to cheating on a test at least once in a year climbed by 21 percent to three quarters of all surveyed.

So what do these differences and the speed of change in behavior tell us? That it is culture, not fixed aspects of human nature, which largely determines the prevalence of cooperation or brutality, honesty or deceit. And since we create culture through our daily choices, then we do, each of us, wield enormous power.

Let me explore related, empowering findings of science that also confirm our power.

Mirrors in Our Brains

Recent neuroscience reveals our interdependence to be vastly greater than we'd ever imagined.

In the early 1990s, neuroscientists were studying the brain activity of monkeys, particularly in the part of the brain's frontal lobe associated with distinct actions, such as reaching or eating. They saw specific neurons firing for specific activities. But then they noticed something they didn't expect at all: The very same neurons fired when a monkey was simply watching another monkey perform the action.

"Monkey see, monkey do" suddenly took on a whole new meaning for me. Since we humans are wired like our close relatives, when we observe someone else, our own brains are simultaneously experiencing at least something of what that person is experiencing. More recent work studying humans has borne out this truth.

These copycats are called "mirror neurons," and their significance is huge. We do walk in one another's shoes, whether we want to or not.

[Our] intimate brain-to-brain link-up… lets us affect the brain — and so the body — of everyone we interact with, just as they do us.
— Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

We literally experience and therefore co-create one another, moment to moment. For me, our "imprintability" is itself a source of hope. We can be certain that our actions, and perhaps our mental states, register in others. We change anyone observing us. That's power.

And we never know who's watching. Just think: It may be when we feel most marginalized and unheard, but still act with resolve, that someone is listening or watching and their life is forever changed.

As I form this thought, the face of Wangari Maathai comes to mind. A Kenyan, Wangari planted seven trees on Earth Day in Nairobi in 1977 to honor seven women environmental leaders there. Then, over two decades, she was jailed, humiliated, and beaten for her environmental activism, but her simple act ultimately sparked a movement in which those seven trees became forty-five million, all planted by village women across Kenya.

In the fall of 2004, when Maathai got the call telling her she had just won the Nobel Peace Prize, her first words were: "I didn't know anyone was listening." But, evidently, a lot of people were beginning to listen, from tens of thousands of self-taught tree planters in Kenya to the Nobel committee sitting in Oslo.

From there I flash back to a conversation with João Pedro Stédile, a founder of the largest and perhaps most effective social movement in this hemisphere — Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement, enabling some of the world's poorest people to gain nearly twenty million acres of unused land. During the military regime in the early 1980s in Brazil, even gathering a handful of people was risky.

Who helped motivate João Pedro? It was Cesar Chavez and the U.S. farm workers' struggle, he told me.

I'll bet Chavez never knew, or even imagined, his example was powerful enough to jump continents.

Just as important, the findings of neuroscience also give us insight as to how to change and empower ourselves. They suggest that a great way is to place ourselves in the company of those we want most to be like. For sure, we'll become more like them.

Thus, whom we choose to spend time with as friends, colleagues, and partners may be our most important choices. And "spending time" means more than face-to-face contact. What we witness on TV, in films, and on the Internet, what we read and therefore imagine — all are firing mirror neurons in our brains and forming us.

As the author of Diet for a Small Planet, I'm associated with a focus on the power of what we put into our mouths. But what we let into our minds equally determines who we become. So why not choose an empowering new diet?

Power Isn't a Four Letter Word

Power is an idea. And in our culture it's a stifling idea. We're taught to see power as something fixed — we either have it or we don't. But if power is our capacity to get things done, then even a moment's reflection tells us we can't create much alone. From there, power becomes something we human beings develop together — relational power. And it's a lot more fun.





Excerpted with permission from Frances Moore Lappé, Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want © 2007, 2010 by Frances Moore Lappé. Published by Small Planet Media, www.smallplanet.org.

Photo: Colin M. Lenton. This photo shows participants from Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools in a "rethink circle," where students and teachers practice honoring each other through their speaking and listening.

Become a School Food Lobbyist on April 21!

Become a School Food Lobbyist on April 21!



Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine emailed me to make me aware of legislation going through the House of Representatives right now! Join me in letting Congress know how we feel!


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Congress is writing a new law that would help schools provide healthier food for their students. Now we need your help! Learn how to lobby Congress and stand up for your health and the health of your family and all young people.


The Healthy School Meals Act of 2010, H.R. 4870 can help reverse America's childhood obesity epidemic by enabling schools across the country to provide healthier options in the lunch line. The more people who call Congress on April 21, the greater the impact we can have. Tell your Member of Congress why YOU want healthy school meals.


Tuesday, April 20: Get ready by joining PCRM's Elizabeth Kucinich on a
Become a School Food Lobbyist on April 21!
national conference call to learn about the Healthy School Meals Act and
how to lobby your Member of Congress.


Wednesday, April 21: Call to ask your Member of Congress in

Washington, D.C., to support the Healthy School Meals Act.
Learn more and sign up at



www.HealthySchoolLunches.org
http://www.facebook.com/PCRMSchoolLunchRevolution

School-Based Physical Activity Positively Impacts Academic Performance
Permanent link
April 16, 2010—SNA members know that school meals provide children with the energy they need to perform their best in the classroom. A new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Adolescent and School Health sheds further light on another aspect of the school experience that can have a positive effect on academic performance—school-based physical activity.

In The Association Between School-Based Physical Activity, Including Physical Education, and Academic Performance, researchers found that school-based physical activity may help improve students’ grades and test scores and positively affect other factors that influence academic achievement. The report also concludes that adding time during the school day for physical activity does not appear to take away from academic performance.

Based on an examination of previous studies pertaining to physical activity in schools, the report authors note that schools can use several strategies to help students meet national physical activity recommendations without detracting from academic performance. For example, schools might consider offering increased physical education time, using trained instructors and increasing the amount of active time during physical education class.

Also according to the report, school leaders can feel confident that participating in recess on a regular basis may have a positive impact on students’ academic performance. In addition, teachers and other school professionals can try to make time for classroom-based physical activity and encourage their students to participate in extracurricular physical activities.

Connecting the Dots

"Connecting the Dots Campaign"

Connecting the Dots is a Campaign for Better Education,

Better Health and Better Schools!

Have you realized that you don't need to re-invent the wheel?

Perhaps there are people out there who already did all the leg work that you are trying to do?


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Join "Connecting the Dots", we connect real people one "Dot" at the time!

How to use this website: Use it as resource for your next School Project, wellness committee, gardening or just a workshop but remember; Leave a comment on what have worked for you.