What Is It All About?

So what is this Flexitarian idea really all about?  What does it actually mean?

The term flexitarian has been around for a little over a decade but perhaps has come to the limelight more in recent years with the Meat Free Monday's campaign headed by the McCartney clan.

So it short flexitarian is 'semi-vegetarian'.  It is eating a vegetarian based diet and then having the flexibility that on others days you eat meat!  For hardcore flexitarians, they might eat a mainly a vegetarian diet with only a couple of meat days, and for others it may be having one meat free day a week.  Either way - WELCOME to the flexitarian lifestyle.

The benefits of this lifestyle are ten fold, from a health perspective, a financial perspective and of course and environmental perspective.  Some of these can be read about in the following posts: 1), 2) and 3).

One big debate is thinking about whether you view Flexitarianism as a diet or a lifestyle.  In 2009 Dawn Jackson released the flexitarian diet book available on amazon.  This book provides a step by step guide to using flexitarianism as a diet, with suggested menu plans included.  USnews has reviewed this diet and summarised it here.

In summary, being a flexitarian is having your cake and eating it!!! Yes I will take the financial, health and environmental benefits of a vegetarian life style........ but I will also take a yummy juice steak every now and then.  In my opinion it is more of a lifesyle rather than a diet, but each to their own.  That is the beauty of flexitarianism......its FLEXIBLE!!!   Make it work for you!  One veggie day, four veggie days..... it doesn't matter, it's what fits with you.

For further reading the Guardian and the Telegraph do a couple of great light hearted easy reading summaries about Flexitarian living.  They are only short so I would encourage everyone to have a quick look.