Joselyn Barahona (6)

For the past five weeks I decided to participate in meatless Monday as a class assignment. It has been a tough five weeks actually. The only meatless days I have done are on good Fridays. Where instead of eating meat my mom would cook fish and shrimp. These past few weeks I was forced to learn alternative ways to get enough protein in my diet and how to be disciplined. There were many times where I wanted to give up and get a burger from the union but I set out a goal that I wanted to follow through with. I also learned that I don’t need to have meat in every single meal just to feel satisfied.  

            My biggest challenge for the past five weeks were preparing my meals. I am a big procrastinator and preparing meals for the next day just did not go well. However, I would hate myself that Monday when I am on campus trying to look for meals without meat in them. Living on a college campus mostly every meal there is has some sort of meat option. To be honest, this was one challenge I did not overcome. I would just end up paying for more food on campus trying to not eat meat. Another challenge I faced was finding ways to eat protein from another source other than meat. Before this meatless Monday assignment I was on a strict diet and would simply have breakfast for cereal, a grilled-chicken salad for lunch, and grilled chicken with brown rice and vegetables for dinner. Two out of three of my meals had chicken in them and because I was so accustomed to it I felt like not having chicken would make me feel hungry a lot more throughout the day. I knew that eggs contained protein and so I substituted many of my meals with eggs. 

The only new food that I tried was brown rice and mushrooms. I’m Honduran and we eat only one kind of rice and that is Canilla’s long grain white rice. Around the time meatless Monday started it was when my diet started and so I decided to eat brown rice instead. Brown rice was not something I was a fan of because I thought it was going to be hard and not tasteful. It was not as bad as I thought it would be. I also had mushrooms for the first time. I never thought I would try eating mushrooms before. To me, mushrooms look nasty and I thought it would taste even nastier. My roommate decided to make sautéed mushrooms for dinner one night and they tasted really good actually. One Monday I made brown rice, beans, and asparagus.

            Overall I think this meatless Monday is a good public health campaign.  Having to do this assignment in the class is something different and can be a great experience for students. I think it should continue to be implemented in the syllabus. I just think that there should be a little lead way because being on a college campus is really hard to find time to make meals. Also, not everyone is able to go out and buy groceries because of lack of transportation. For example, I don’t have a car and it was hard for me sometimes to create new meals every week. I can only imagine how hard it was for individuals who live in the on-campus residence halls or for those who have meal plans. When you only have a meal plan to rely on for food it is hard to go meatless. It is almost impossible to create new meals that do not have meat in them without it becoming repetitive. However, I think with the proper planning this can be a successful experience for all students in the upcoming classes.