I posed a question on Earth day about eco-friendly lifestyle changes people are doing, and a good portion of responses involved reducing meat intake. I’ve been wanting to do “meatless Mondays” for a while, and finally got to it this summer. Now, 6 weeks in and counting, I can say it is an official family habit that I include in our monthly meal planning. The good news is, it was not that hard!
In the spirit of using my data engineering skills, I took a look at twitter to see whether Mondays were in fact special in the meat free culture. I monitored the occurrence of “meatless” and “meat free” in tweets over the last 4 weeks, and (unsurprisingly), mentions on Mondays were 2x the daily average. It also seems that interest in meatless meals dwindles post Thursday and into the weekend (Figure 1). To be specific, we are 2.5x times less likely to talk about “meat free” on Thursdays through Sundays than on Monday. I guess we all need some meat to get us through the end of the week?
You’ll also see an unusual spike in meatless mentions on Friday and Sunday in week 4 (Figure 2). Turns out, Barack Obama’s birthday party on Saturday included some meatless options, which added some buzz around the topic. As the dataset is so small, any special event or celebrity mentions will throw the expected pattern off, but we can trust the average.
Although Monday does seem special for being meat free, I’ve found success by keeping my meatless day flexible (I only did it on Monday the first two weeks). If you’re looking to reduce your meat intake, look up new recipes for inspiration and choose the days that work for you. Stay the course, it’ll come naturally soon!
Kalia Akkad 