Meatless Monday: How Going Meatless One Day a Week Can Save You Cash
You may have heard the term “Meatless Monday” before, but like most people probably thought you enjoyed meat way too much to ever give it up at meal time. But the truth is, going meatless one day per week doesn’t just help you live a healthier life, it helps you save money as well! Let’s take a look at how going meatless one day a week can save you cash and help stretch your food budget, while also helping you live better! You might be surprised at how fun a Meatless Monday can be! Here is How Having a Meatless Monday Saves You Money!
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Did you know that Meatless Monday isn’t just some cute name for a fad? It’s actually a purposeful initiative created in collaboration with The Center for a Livable Future with the goal of improving everyone’s health, plus helping the environment. The people at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health believe that having one meatless day a week would be so beneficial to us all that they went through the effort of creating and promoting an initiative! That says something big about how much a Meatless Monday can improve your life health-wise. But as we’ll discuss, Meatless Mondays aren’t just great for your health- they’re also great for your wallet!
How Having a Meatless Monday Saves You Money
1. You can experiment with less expensive in season produce.
When you buy in season fruits and vegetables, you can snag them for just pennies a pound. This means you can make all sorts of soups, salads, and stir fry using your fresh produce while still saving some cash. Consider citrus fruits in the winter, apples and squash in the fall, corn and tomatoes in the summer, and of course strawberries in the spring! For a full list of in season produce, check out the USDA seasonal produce guide.
2. Going meatless one day per week can save you on average $40 per month!
Suppose you are cooking for a family of four. In one day you may enjoy bacon at breakfast, ham slices at lunch, and hamburgers for dinner. The cost of all this meat can add up easily to $10 or more per day. It’s even more costly if you’re trying to eat nitrate free, non-GMO, or organic. Go meatless just once a week for a month and you can save $40 or MORE! Think of what that could add up to over the course of a year. You could very well save over $400 by just making this menu tweak once a week. Seems easy enough, right?
3. You will be more likely to meal plan, which saves cash.
When planning to enjoy Meatless Mondays, you will need to meal plan ahead of time. Any regular meal planner will tell you that meal planning saves cash. You can create meals with purpose, plan around sales and specials, and avoid food waste. Once you start planning Meatless Mondays, you might start planning other menus for the week as well! If you really want to organize your family’s meals, then you should get my printable recipe binder.
4. Dry goods can complete a meal and save your budget.
Dried goods like pasta, rice, and beans are all filling foods and can also be purchased for less than $1 per pound. Use these items to make meatless casseroles, soups, and side dishes that are tasty, filling, and good for your budget. And if you season them well enough, you won’t even realize that meat is missing from your dishes! Trust me, a good homemade bean burger is way better than any frozen commercial bean burgers you may have tried. My kids complain if I try to get them bean burgers at our local burger joint, but will happily gobble up the ones I make without a peep! So keeping dry goods like beans and pasta well stocked is a great way to keep your Meatless Mondays going without a hitch.
5. A healthier life costs less.
When you live a healthy lifestyle, you are less likely to experience major health problems. Skipping meat just one day a week can help eliminate fat and cholesterol from your diet. Plus it’ll be one day that you’re not possibly consuming any harmful hormones, nitrates, or any of the other things in meat that make it not so great for you. You don’t have to be 100% vegetarian or vegan to be healthy, but switching from eating meat all day every day to just eating meat occasionally can be a major boost to your health. This can help you feel great and avoid issues such as obesity, high blood pressure, and some cancers. And let’s face it, every trip you don’t have to take to the doctor can help save you cash.
As you can see, there are all sorts of ways that enjoying Meatless Monday one day a week can save you cash. Consider adding a Meatless Monday to your weekly meal planning and see if you notice a considerable difference to your food budget over time!
If you don’t already have some great meatless dishes in your recipe binder, check out the Meatless Monday website for tons of great recipes to try! You’ll see some familiar meatless recipes (like pizza and bean burgers), plus a bunch of less common meatless dishes, like maitake squash blossom fettuccine!
What’s your favorite meatless entree?
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