How a Simple Idea Can Create a Worldwide Health Movement

Background:  Meatless Monday was launched in 2003 in association with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health to reduce meat consumption by 15%, the recommended goal of the Surgeon General.  Sid Lerner, the Founder and Chairman of the Monday Campaigns, suggested a simple idea from World War 1 to motivate people to make this change:  Meatless Monday. Going meatless once a week can reduce the risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. It can also help limit our carbon footprint and save resources like fresh water and fossil fuel.

Program background:  Meatless Monday started as a website offering weekly recipes.  Site visits and awareness grew modestly over the first 5 years – then, in April 2009, a tipping point occurred.   Michael Pollan went on Oprah,  proclaiming Meatless Monday as the most important thing people can do to address climate change and Paul McCartney started the first international Meatless Monday in the UK.  In October 2009, the Baltimore City Schools instituted Meatless Monday for its 80,000 students, which created a spirited debate in the media from Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck and Charlie Gibson to name a few. Since then, Meatless Monday has been championed by civic leaders such as the Manhattan Borough President and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; served at a growing number of school and corporate cafeterias; featured weekly in over 100 blogs including the The Huffington Post; mushroomed into 8 international programs from Brazil to Taiwan; and most recently been the plot line in the ABC teen series 10 Things I Hate About You.

Evaluation Methods and Results: Evaluation methods include campaign awareness, site visits, followers on Facebook and Twitter, reach of media and participation of celebrities, experts, schools, businesses, countries and cities.  Our awareness in the US grew from 14.5% in 2008 to 24% in 2009. We now have 30,000 site visitors per month, 4,200 Facebook fans and 4,500 Twitter followers. Our weekly features on The Huffington Post reach over 8 million readers, and regular coverage in national news sources continues to propel our message.  And we continually learn of new groups starting their own Meatless Monday.  Just this week, Mario Batali announced plans to feature a Meatless Monday entree at his 14 restaurants.

Conclusions:  Meatless Monday is an example of a public health campaign growing exponentially without a large advertising or production budget.  Why?  Because it’s a compelling idea -- like the Designated Driver campaign, it’s a clear, memorable, easy action that can be translated across cultures, demographic groups, international borders and a breadth of causes, including public health, the environment and animal rights. This combination of simplicity and flexibility has been at the heart of Meatless Monday’s growth, allowing it to be individual while at the same time global.

Implications for research and/or practice:  Finding cost effective, sustainable health promotion ideas is one of the greatest imperatives of our time. The Meatless Monday story tells us that dramatic results can be achieved by focusing on big ideas that can enter the public's consciousness and take on a life of their own.