What if I told you that I had a new idea for a dinner theme at Glar, one where we took all of the soda and replaced it with water or fruit juice. After all, soda dissolves the enamel of your teeth and is nothing but empty sugar and calories. Besides, there are plenty of people already who don’t drink soda with their meal. Or, we could take all of the desserts and replace them with fruit salads because, after all, dessert isn’t quite nutritious for you either. Now, if these ideas of mine were actually implemented, I doubt you’d be very happy. You’re losing out on some pretty important parts of your meal. Indeed, I think there would be a whole lot of disgruntled diners. So it’s no wonder that there are a lot of people, myself included, who are upset with the idea of a ‘meatless Monday’.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the idea behind ‘meatless Monday’. Meat comes from animals, and animals require food to be sustained. There is a lot of grain and other staple foods which could be going to feed people that go to feed animals, instead. It’s an argument that I can sympathize with, an argument I can understand. Indeed, it is something that Glar could focus on and work with in order to educate and change the behavior of its patrons. But entirely removing meat from the menu doesn’t do anything but antagonize and annoy people who want to eat whatever they want to eat on a Monday evening. People don’t recognize that feeding the animals that make our sandwich meat uses a lot of valuable resources, instead they recognize that they’re entirely unsatisfied with their lettuce and tomato sandwich. People don’t realize that you can maintain a healthy diet without meat, instead they’re deciding that they’re going to go to the pub next Monday.
‘Meatless Mondays’ should be ‘less meat Monday’. It should be about educating the Glar patrons about thinking about where their food comes and about what they eat. I’m sure we would even be content with having sandwich meat to deal with, and an all vegetarian main entre. Cutting large portions of meat out of the menu can provide the baby steps needed to relieving the real issues behind the idea. After all, we don’t have recycling drives where we go from throwing everything into the trash to being completely green. It requires a step-by-step process, it demands that we be guided there gently. Instead, ‘Meatless Mondays’ has gone all out by saying that nothing in Glar will feature meat. Its unfortunate, because it shouldn’t be about punishing or discriminating against a sizable portion of Glar’s patrons, the meat eaters, by entirely removing meat. It should be about changing and modifying behavior. The way it’s gone down, however, means that it doesn’t get the job done, it doesn’t teach anybody any valuable lessons, it has left a large amount of animosity towards the people who are staffing and administering Glar, and I’m sure it means that next Monday the pub will be having a lot of business.
I think more people will feel ok with Meatless Mondays if they view this video. I think that once they acknowledge that the ham on their sandwich is a pig, the same pig who has gone through extreme forms of torture and slaughter so that they will be on their sandwich Tuesday – Sunday, they might give it up for at least one day.
Most people don’t understand how much meat products are in every day food. From the wonder ingredient gelatin (made from bone marrow) that is found in jello, creams, gummies to the different meat broths in soups, it is VERY, VERY, VERY hard to eat in the Englar Dining Hall.
Vegetarians would love to walk into glar and not ask the food line people “is that made with a vegetable broth?”, “was that food made in the same containers or cookware as the meat products?”, “are you sure that is made without gelatin?”. There are so many sneaky ingredients in food, that one day won’t hurt you.
Vegetarians eat with a limited menu everyday, so one day shouldn’t be a lot to ask for in my opinion.
What video are you referring to? I don’t see a link.
I think the issue stemming from this decision is that students are mainly looking at this as a decision to provide more eating opportunities to vegetarians rather than a way to possibly cut down on grains being fed to animals that we eat instead of humans. However, focusing on how most students are perceiving this issue it is important to realize that being a vegetarian is voluntary. People would be more understanding of the implementation of no meat on mondays if being a vegetarian was not a choice based on personal opinions. These personal opinions are respected by fellow students but they are not opinions that should be forced onto other students just as non-vegetarians would never ask to have a day with only meat (I know that kind of situation is a little different, not exactly fair but you get the point). A better solution would be to increase the availability of vegetarian meals in Glar and cut back on meat, but not entirely. I know Glar went trayless not too long ago, which was a great solution because it really has saved a lot of energy, money, and waste and trays have nothing to do with the livelihood of a human. The goal of cutting back on meat is completely different since it deals with nutrition and diet, which is completely tied to the well being of a human and interference with something like this is much more dramatic then taking away inessential trays as opposed to essential sources of nutrition.