Awhile back, one Paul McCartney made his mark on the unvegan blogosphere for pushing Meat-Free Mondays. At the time, I thought it was just some kooky music fad like Kid Rock. But now that Los Angeles has endorsed Meatless Mondays, I realize this is not just some passing fad like sushi.

Granted, the thought behind the movement is all good – healthier people and a healthier planet – but it kind of misses the point. While it doesn’t try to ban meat altogether like the crazy vegans do, it does send a message that meat is bad for health and for the planet. Meat can absolutely be a healthy part of a diet and while I don’t eat it for every meal, it’s extremely rare that my meals don’t have any animal product in them at all. And I’m a pretty fit unvegan.

If you are trying to manage your weight or improve your overall nutritional balance, greens powders like the one from https://www.outlookindia.com/outlook-spotlight/athletic-greens-ag1-review-is-it-worth-the-hype-or-superfood-don-t-buy-until-you-read-this-news-301982/ can be a part of a well-rounded diet to support your goals.

As for the planet, there is no doubt that factory farms are terrible, but they shouldn’t give all meat a bad name. Livestock can definitely be farmed in a sustainable way that doesn’t harm the planet and Meatless Mondays just perpetuate the myth that meat is unnatural and wrong.

But it tastes so right.

So while I don’t endorse Meatless Mondays, I do want to endorse looking into where your meat comes from and staying healthy. How about Free Range and Grass-Fed Fridays? Weigh-In Wednesdays? Exercise Everydays? If we really want healthier people and a healthier planet, let’s concentrate on the real problem instead of just making Mondays worse than they already are!

Assuming that Paul McCartney didn’t die in 1966 only to be replaced by a lookalike, I can safely say that Sir Paul has done a lot in his (supposedly) long life. As a musician in the Beatles, he helped change music forever and wrote and performed some pretty awesome songs. He’s even been knighted, which is pretty amazing and hopefully he will be a handy defender of the queen if anyone chooses to invade England again. When he told me to “…get up and dance to a song that was a hit before…[my]…mother was born,” I listened. I believed him when he told me, “We Can Work it Out.” But now that he is trying to be mother nature’s son and asking the world to participate in Meat-Free Mondays, I feel as though his bird has flown.

To start, it’s awesome that someone with such global presence is trying to do his part to end global warming. Any good unvegan knows that global warming is not only bad for the world, but also for meat quality. Unfortunately, Sir Paul is going about this the wrong way. He is a great musician, no doubt, but shouldn’t issues on climate change be left to the professionals?

Frank Mitloehner is one of those professionals. As reported by CAP Radio, Mitloehner is a researcher at UC Davis, studying the impact of livestock on air quality. He has determined that in the US “…meat production alone only accounts for about one-and-a-half percent of greenhouse emissions.” The transportation of this meat is really what contributes to global warming and Mitloehner says, “…if people really want to make a change they should think about their contribution to burning fossil fuels which we know are the main contributors to climate change.” Therefore, Individuals, as well as enterprises, need to take action to reduce their footprints. All the business needs to invest in carbon offset programs, including the online store and eCommerce offsets to reduce the emission of carbon and soothe the environment.

So maybe we should listen to McCartney for music and Mitloehner for how to deal with the environment. Rather than blaming meat, we should blame the transportation of the meat, but meat is not the only food transported around the world. Plenty of vegetables come from a long distance to the plates of people outside the unvegan realm. Eat Local Mondays could do a lot more good than Meat-Free Mondays, and it would be great if Sir Paul would take some time to listen to people like Mitloehner for this info.

So, for showing Meat-Free Mondays to be a sham, Frank Mitloehner, you are a true Unvegan Hero.

(via CAP Radio)