'Meatless Mondays' Meals Launched At NYC's Public Hospitals

NEW YORK — Herbivores won't have to dread these Mondays. New York City's public hospitals have rolled out "Meatless Mondays" menus in an effort to encourage patients to eat healthier.

All 11 acute care public hospitals now offer a range of meatless meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner each Monday in addition to their regular menus, NYC Health + Hospitals announced Monday.

The options will include black bean soup, vegan "beefless strips" and spaghetti with garden bolognese sauce, with new dishes to be added over time, the agency said.

"We want to empower our patients to live their healthiest lives by introducing them to healthier foods that they may choose once they’re discharged," Dr. Mitchell Katz, Health + Hospitals' president and CEO, said in a statement.

Some 1,500 patients across the 11 hospitals picked a meatless Monday option when the dishes were first offered on Jan. 7, according to Health + Hospitals, which runs the system. The hospitals will introduce the program to patients with brochures and tray cards and promote it with the slogan "Power Up with Plants," the agency said.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who reportedly reversed his Type 2 diabetes with help from a vegan diet, called on the hospitals to join the Meatless Mondays movement. Fifteen schools in Brooklyn were similarly set to start offering meatless Monday menus last year.

"Our shared goal is to create a healthier Big Apple, one where our government institutions support healthful dietary choices," Adams, a Democrat, said in a statement. "Hospitals have a unique opportunity to influence patients and families in rethinking the nutritional quality of their meals, and Meatless Mondays now has a role in that conversation."

The public hospitals aren't the only ones in the city to take the meatless Monday pledge. Four NewYork-Presbyterian hospital cafeterias started offering vegetarian options each Monday in February of last year, according to a news release.

Katz said the new initiative fits with a pilot program Health + Hospitals launched at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital last year to help patients with a chronic disease move to a plant-based diet. The $400,000 program was due to start in fall 2018 and get an evaluation after six months, a news release says.

(Lead image: Meatless spaghetti with black bean soup and three-bean chili are among the meals offered in public hospitals as part of a new "Meatless Mondays" initiative. Photos from NYC Health + Hospitals)