Maybe we should just eat less meat on a daily basis.
Despite the millions of dollars flowing into the alternative-meat industry, more diners are tackling the issue in a much simpler way: They’re eating less meat.
“Even if (people) go meatless one day a week, they can make a huge difference,” says Kristie Middleton, author of a new book, “Meat Less” (De Capo Lifelong Books; 256 pages; $27). According to a recent study by Friends of the Earth, an environmental advocacy group with offices in Berkeley and Washington, D.C., a 30 percent reduction in meat, poultry and cheese over two years shrank the district’s carbon footprint by 14 percent.
Brian Kateman, who has a new book of his own, “The Reducetarian Solution” (TarcherPerigee; 320 pages; $16), shares a similar perspective: Just because some people stop eating meat — be it for ethical, environmental or health reasons — the all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone. Meat reduction is a mindful yet more flexible approach.
Only a small percentage of Americans identify as vegetarians all the time (3.3 percent according to a 2016 Harris Poll conducted on behalf of the Vegetarian Resource Group, a nonprofit vegetarian and vegan education organization), but 37 percent of the population always or sometimes eats vegetarian (including vegan) meals when eating out. A February report published by market research and intelligence firm Mintel found that 31 percent of Americans occasionally like to have meat-free days.
Both Middleton and Kateman grew up in American suburbs not known for vegetarian-friendly options. Middleton was raised on a diet of McDonald’s hamburgers and Chick-fil-A nuggets in Chesapeake, Va. She became a vegetarian in college and has since shifted to a vegan diet; she now lives in Oakland and is the senior director of food policy for the Humane Society of the United States. As a longtime advocate for meatless eating, she works with
institutions and schools, including Oakland Unified School District to establish programs like Meatless Mondays and Lean and Green Wednesdays (a variation on Meatless Monday).
Kateman, who grew up on New York’s Staten Island, spent his youth dining on hamburgers and chicken wings at Applebee’s. During college, when a friend jokingly handed him a copy of “The Ethics of What We Eat” by Peter Singer and Jim Mason while he was eating a hamburger, it completely changed the way he thought about meat. “It was pretty mindblowing for me,” says Kateman, who became a vegetarian. However, like many people who attempt to eliminate meat from their diets, Kateman learned that it’s not as easy as it might seem. He is currently neither vegan nor vegetarian.
“The problem was, I wasn’t always perfect about it,” says Kateman, who recalls his sister calling him out at the Thanksgiving dinner table for grabbing a piece of turkey. In 2014, he co-founded the Reducetarian Foundation to offer a more pragmatic approach to help spread meat-free, plantbased lifestyles to a larger audience.
“We know people are less likely to commit to a large behavioral change than a small one. There are so many reasons why this common-sense approach is the way to go,” Kateman says.
Middleton concurs: “There’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.”
Welcome to the softer side of vegetarianism.