There are many initiatives today that are asking people to voluntarily cut back on their meat consumption. I actually work for a public health campaign called Meatless Monday where we advocate going meatless to cut back on your saturated fat intake by 15% (one day out of 7) and thereby reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and stroke, four of the leading causes of death in the U.S.

Cutting back on meat will also reduce your carbon footprint and the statistics on how meat consumption affects the environment are incredibly shocking. For instance, according to Environmental Defense – if every American replaced one chicken meal per week with a vegetarian one, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than a half-million cars off U.S. roads. (www.meatlessmonday.com/dyk_environment)

The reason I found the story about President Truman asking Americans to cut back on meat interesting is that recently there have been questions raised as to whether initiatives based on voluntary participation will work. In fact, a report published by Surrey University in the UK calls for the government to begin rationing meat and dairy in order to slow climate change because “campaigns encouraging people to change their habits voluntarily were doomed to fail”. (that article is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/30/food.ethicalliving)

Just something interesting to think about…obviously the post war climate changes circumstances and people were probably accustomed to making bigger sacrifices. Will they do the same for their own health or for the planet?