Pirate's Cove

Yes, some nattering nabobs aren’t content with living their own lives meat free on Mondays, they want you to do the same!

There’s a movement afoot aimed at changing the way we eat one day a week.

The Meatless Monday campaign is backed by public health advocates, chefs and suburban moms who want to tackle the problems of cholesterol and heart disease. One risk factor for these chronic conditions is consuming too much saturated fat — the type of fat found in meat.

Have you ever noticed that these types of nannying noobs are never content with living their own lives, they have to push, sometimes with legislation, for everyone else to do the same?

Sid Lerner, 79, learned the art of persuasion during his 50-year advertising career on Madison Avenue. One of Lerner’s most successful campaigns was the “Squeeze the Charmin” campaign. In the commercials, grocery shoppers can’t keep their hands off the irresistibly soft Charmin toilet paper.

Lerner says the campaign uses the rhythm of the week to its advantage: Friday is payday, Saturday is play day, Sunday is pray day.

But Monday?

It’s ripe for change, he says. He wants people to cut back on saturated fat by eating three meatless meals on Mondays.

Mind your own business.

To help make the message exciting, he’s trying to bring top chefs into the fold. Wolfgang Puck and Mario Batali have both endorsed the concept, offering some Meatless Monday options. And simultaneously, Paul McCartney has pushed Meat Free Monday in England.

McCartney pushes it because of his discredited belief that eating meat will kill us all with globull warming.

The last thing Lerner wants is for Meatless Monday to become a campaign of food elitists in New York City. So, through a partnership with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, he’s reached out to institutional dining faculties — from hospitals to school cafeterias. This will be the second year that some 80,000 Baltimore school kids will dine meat-free in their cafeterias on Mondays. And it’s moved beyond Baltimore.

“The movement is just spreading like wildfire,” says Karen Campbell, who directs wellness programs at Northern Kentucky University. She’s helped bring Meatless Monday to her school and several restaurants in her town.

Sounds great. You’re lying in a hospital bed (been there twice for a week at a time with a broken ankle and broken leg), suffering, stuck, and some jackwagon tells you you can’t have meat. Wait, how much are you paying for that room? You already feel like garbage, last thing you need is to be denied some real food. Why can’t people just mind their own business?