Before I took the active choice of heavily reducing my meat consumption, I did a lot of research. Not only did I try to find out why it would be great if I eat less meat (which you can read more about in this article). I also found a lot of websites featuring tips and tricks to reduce meat without having to “suffer”.
Now, I was afraid of craving meat for every meal every day. That is why I did this research. And in this blog post, I am going to share with you all that I learned. If you are in a situation where you want to eat less meat but struggle to find the perfect way of doing it – then you have come to the right place. 🙂
Table of Contents
- 7 Ways of Eating Less Meat Without Sacrificing Your Life Quality
- Conclusion – where to go from here?
7 Ways of Eating Less Meat Without Sacrificing Your Life Quality
Before we start: I know that you are skeptical. So was I.
When you talk about reducing your meat consumption with people, the same questions always pop up:
“Aren`t you afraid of not getting enough protein?”
“How can you LIVE WITHOUT eating a bloody beef every week?”
“Are you sure that this is what you want?”
Anyway. Let me try to convince you by giving you some super useful guidelines.
1. Sit down and plan your meals for the upcoming week every Sunday
You can do this by either using an Excel sheet (more eco-friendly) or use a pen and paper. You should stay focused for 15 minutes every Sunday. This will help you to plan your week.
In the beginning, you should focus to have at least one meat-free dinner every week. As you get used to salad and rice, you can try two days without any meat. Before you know it, you will have a full week of meat-free dinners.
My (almost) vegan/vegetarian weekly dinner plan
This is how my week usually looks like:
| Day of the week | What do I eat? |
|---|---|
| Monday | Vegan lasagna. |
| Tuesday | Spaghetti with cheese and pesto. |
| Wednesday | Meatballs. |
| Thursday | Beyond burger.* |
| Friday | Taco. Non-vegetarian. Just straight out taco with minced meat, cheese and vegetables. |
| Saturday | Pizza. Sometimes with meat, sometimes without meat. |
| Sunday | Onion pie. |
I figured out that a lot of people underestimate the power of planning. If you do not plan your dinner, I can almost guarantee you that you will be eating the same stuff over and over again. If you are used to buying frozen pizza or Chinese takeaway, its a damn hard habit to leave. Believe me – I have been there.
2. Eat meat that isn’t meat
You might have been a bit curious about my Thursday dinner?
Beyond Meat is only one of several food brands focusing on creating “meat-like” food by using plant proteins. Texture, taste ,and color are more or less identical to a beef burger.
Some people claim that it tastes 100 % identical to meat. I do not agree. Before a family dinner, I tried to serve it to my mum and dad without telling them about what I served. They both said that “it has to be something wrong with this burger”.
Beyond Burger vs Impossible Burger: Youtube Review
The two largest plant-based burgers were brought to the table by a Youtube channel called CNET. In this short 4 minutes video, the presenter goes through both burgers to see what they contain, how they feel and taste like. Worth a look:
3. Pack your lunch before going to work.
This is probably one of the things that had the biggest impact on me. In the canteen where I work, they always have at least one meat dish. And guess what – I was always going for that one when I did not bring my lunch.
After I started to either buy a salad from a local shop near my home or make it at home, I am not tempted to eat meat for lunch anymore.
To be fair, I got a bit lightheaded (and slightly dizzy) by only eating salad to start with. Now I started to bring a couple of pieces of bread together with my salad. That helped a lot.
4. Start to read “vegan” and “vegetarian” recipe blogs
This happened by coincidence. Previously, I hated reading food blogs. Not only do I have a “meh” attitude towards cooking, but I also felt that the pictures they presented was not real. When I tried to duplicate whatever recipe I could find, it always looked worse compared to the picture on the website.
One day I was looking for a recipe for lasagna – and I came across this fantastic vegan blog. Honestly, it revolutionized how many “non-meat dishes” I could make. Before reading these blogs, I could maybe come up with 3-4 dinner meals that did not contain meat. Now I know at least 10 by heart!
I actually made a long list of the best vegetarian blogs to follow. You might want to check it out by clicking here. Believe me: reading these blogs will make a huge difference.
5. Explore new veggies
I know an activity that will make you understand how limited you are. Open a new sheet in Excel (or get a new piece of paper). Write down all the vegetables that you are currently using in your day-to-day cooking.
I will put some money on that at least some of these are not included in your list:
– Horseradish root?
– Artichokes?
– Asparagus?
– Black garlic?
– Candy beetroot?
– Padron Peppers?
– Baby leeks?
– Are you confused already? 🙂
You might be. But don`t worry. If you live in an urban area, I can almost guarantee you that you have easy access to all these veggies (and a lot more!). What helped me exploring more was to go down to the vegetable shops that were run by people from Africa and Asia. These shops are very good at importing exotic fruits and vegetables that will help you to expand your knowledge of vegetarian food in a very good way.
6. Stop eating fast food
Yeah, I know this is a big ask. After a drunken night out, the only thing you can think of is to go across the street from the pub and eat a huge hamburger at McDonalds. Fair enough.
What I found very interesting was that once I stopped eating fast food, my preference for meat would slowly decrease. Let`s be fair: you do not go to Burger King, McDonalds or KFC to eat a salad.
That just doesn’t happen.
The only vegetarian things that you might consider in those restaurants are soda and ice cream. And that would not make you very full.
There are also other reasons why you shouldn’t eat at fast-food chains. If you want to read more about the massive environmental damage they make to our planet, feel free to read this article.
I guess you will be shocked.
I’ve tried a veggie burger. Here’s my review.
Stay away from low quality meat
Another point to make is that fast-food chains do not provide you with high-quality meat. I am in a position where I reduced my meat consumption by about 80-90 %. So the meat that I will eat HAS TO BE of extreme quality. I am willing to pay extra to get the best of the best. That is why McDonalds isn`t an option for me – not even when I am drunk. 🙂
Also read: Is cooking at home better for the environment?
7. Educate yourself about what meat does to your body and the environment
This is where it all started for me. I will be completely honest: the taste of (some) meat is delicious. I love it.
But after reading several medical research papers from doctors pointing out the health risk of eating red meat, I was scared. And when I started to understand how big of an environmental impact beef production can be traced back to, I was determined: this has to stop!
Get more tips on sustainable eating here.
Documentaries showing how bad the meat industry can be
Reading online can be a bit boring sometimes. I would rather recommend to watch a couple of documentaries. This is my top 3:
1. Food Inc.
The whole reason why this documentary was made is quite clear. The moviemakers want to give a realistic picture of what happens in the food industry. And, unfortunately, that involves things like animal abuse, practices that are extremely harmful to the environment and how food (especially meat products) are made unhealthy on purpose. All of this just to make the food cheaper and sell more.
Highly recommended.
2. Cowspiracy.
The facts you are presented with while watching “Cowspiracy” are quite shocking. To be honest, I did not believe most of it while I watched it. So be prepared to have your phone ready while watching – and you can run a fact check on everything that you do not believe to be true. 🙂
I did that. And unfortunately, they did not lie. After watching this movie, you are probably not too eager to have a steak for dinner the same night.
3. Supersize me.
You are probably familiar with this movie already. Some American guy in his 30`s decide to only eat McDonalds for a month straight. He wanted to see what the food did to his body. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I can tell you right away that things are not looking pretty in the end.
Conclusion – where to go from here?
I hope that you learned something from this article. If you want to decrease your meat consumption, you should do something about it.
Do it step by step. That is easier. Becoming a vegan from one day to the other is very dangerous. A study from UK showed that 50 % of all young Brits have tried to go vegan, but only a few of them can sustain a vegan lifestyle. In other words: do not become a “failure”.
If you really want to eat less meat, there should be nothing stopping you (apart from your own will and laziness). 🙂
As a “new-born vegan”, I can say that creating a food plan is alfa & omega to succeed.
If you want to make other people vegan (or eat less meat), you would have to make them watch documentaries on Netflix. That is the single best thing to do in order to “help” people to the good side.
Hi Inge. You are right.
Planning my dinner is super important. 🙂 It has helped to reduce my meat consumption a lot.
Buy electric car. Don’t fly. Drink less alcohol. Train! Visit more often. Stop being so angry. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Shame on you.
No one likes a moralist, no matter how right the moralist can have. And it seems that little is needed before the label is put and the recipient of the message ends up in the mess.
I eat meat, but SIGNIFICANTLY less meat compared to what I did before. And what I hate the most is people asking me to eat less meat. You know what? I eat whatever I want as long as it’s legal.
No people need meat.
If you’ve seen that documentary on Netflix about the vegan bodybuilder, you can clearly see that meat is just something people take to get fitter faster. And in the end, it will kill you inside.
Thanks for the list. I’ve actually gone 100 % vegan now, but I also applaud people that take the step bit-by-bit.
True. I’m on my way 😉
The gamechanger for me was to start reading vegetarian blogs. Looking into the vegetable section in the grocery store, I couldn’t understand why everyone were buying so much of them. My diet litereally involved BEEF every single dinner. That’s sad to look back at.
With the extreme number of great vegan blogs out there, I have enough inspiration to eat veggies every day…and once in a week I eat meat 😉
Hi Johanna. Absolutely. 🙂
That’s a brilliant way of learnings more vegan or vegetarian recipes.
More people should read articles like this. The reason is that most people are not aware of the huge environmental impact of especially red meat. I would not “arrest” the people who eat chicken. You might think of chicken as a bad thing to our planet, but it’s not.
So to conclude…go to KFC instead of McDonald’s! 😉
I translate and quote something that I found online:
Several studies show that a reduction in meat consumption is the single change in people’s eating habits that will have the greatest impact on the climate. The UN believes that global meat consumption must go down by as much as 60 percent.
Animal husbandry for food production accounts for nearly 15 percent of global man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Meat production is not only a source of CO2 and methane emissions, but also requires a lot of land, water and other resources.
A dinner of cattle as the main ingredient actually requires nine times more food soil than a vegetarian dinner of legumes, and nearly 15,500 liters of water is required to produce one kilogram of beef.
Going “meat free” is super hard. Its not necessarily the taste of meat that sort of makes you want to buy chicken and beef all the time. These things are what I am struggling with:
1) the fact that EVERY dish I learned to make on school and by my parents were always including meat. In other words: I do not have a huge repertoire of non-meat dishes. That is bad.
2) all the social events I am included in will include meat. Its not like my friend Brad at 25 would suddenly go; “Oh yeah guys, sorry to not mention this earlier, but in my BBQ party it will actually be some nice vegan options as well”.
anyway: great article. I will try to plan my dinners in a more efficient way. That would be step #1 at least
Hi Michael, thanks for your comment. I totally understand what you mean.
Social events wasn’t that big of an issue for me as in Norwegian culture, we very seldom have common dinner together. And if we do, it’s at a restaurant that also got vegetarian options.
However, learning to create tasty vegetarian dishes was a big issue for me as well. It doesn’t take a long time to become good at it though.