So for this month's healthy resolution that is all there is to it. While meal planning and grocery shopping for upcoming weeks, plan in a meal that doesn't include chicken or turkey or beef or pork. Instead, find your protein in other sources. Like beans, whole grains, nuts and seeds.
There are tons of reasons to go meatless – it is a healthy alternative to meat, it helps save money, and it provides variety in our diet which in turn gives our body different nutrients than we might get from a slab of meat.
– Limit Your Cancer Risk: Red meat and processed meats are associated with colon cancer, and a diet higher in fruits and vegetables is associated with reducing cancer risk. Other research has linked meat consumption to prostate, pancreatic, and gastric cancers as well.
– Improve Your Diet: Consuming beans or peas results in higher intakes of fiber, protein, folate, zinc, iron and magnesium with lower intakes of saturated fat and total fat.
– It Helps You "Go Green": Raising cattle for beef and milk spews more greenhouse gases into the air than all of the cars currently on the road. That stat came from a 2006 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report. Eating a plant-based meal for lunch instead of a burger saves 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, 133 gallons of water, and 24 square feet of land, according to the people over at the PB&J Campaign.
My husband and I enjoy beans for dinner as our protein source at least once a week – and we LOVE it! Here are a few meatless meal options to get you started.
Have an awesome meatless April!
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