When a Fridge is a Bridge to a Healthier Life for the Family

From the San Angelo Standard-Times.

"My refrigerator broke down Dec. 28. As soon as I got off the phone with the hubby, I almost had a panic attack. My extended family was in town and we were supposed to leave on a trip to the Dallas area the next day. The timing couldn't be worse.

When I got home from work, I took a deep breath as the garage door slowly inched up. Getting upset wouldn't fix the problem. And the fact my family was visiting meant there'd be just that many more hands to help. If we all worked together, we could still hit the road next day. I'd just have to change the early morning departure time to noon or after.

More bad news greeted me as soon as I stepped into the house. The refrigerator could be fixed for a price in the hundreds and after a two-week wait for the appropriate parts. Actually that made my decision easier: We were getting a new refrigerator.

The second piece of bad news involved the trip. My parents and sister buy into the idea that everything happens for a reason. They wanted me to cancel the trip. Maybe this was the universe's way of making sure I stayed home, maybe I avoided a bigger problem with this refrigerator. Now the youngsters in the group, my darling husband and I had worked hard to get everyone to agree to this family trip and we'd been excited. Disappointment left a bitter taste in our mouths and quite a few tears were shed.

However, I believe sometimes you should go with the flow and not push your luck. I also know my family. If I insisted on the trip and we ended up, by some fluke, breaking down on the road or in a wreck, I'd hear about it for the rest of my life. So we cancelled the trip and went on a refrigerator shopping expedition instead.

The 25-cubic-foot refrigerator that expired had been about three years old, with a bottom freezer, lots of neat slide-out shelves, ice water dispenser in the door, and it beeped in warning if the doors didn't close properly or I'd had the doors open for too long.

What I ended up getting: a 21-cubic foot refrigerator with an old-fashioned design where the freezer is on top and a single door refrigerator on the bottom, no ice and water dispensers on the door, and it definitely doesn't beep (that's a plus).

My reason for downgrading is when cleaning out the old refrigerator I discovered too many long forgotten items — a ketchup bottle with just a bit left in it, a small jar of wasabi, mayo that I'd loved but didn't eat often, a bottle of rose-colored desi syrup you could stir in water for a cool summer drink, all of which had managed to go to the back of the fridge and get lost. I also discovered frozen alligator meat, shrimp and sausage that had gotten buried at the bottom of the freezer.

Being my parents' daughter, of course I took the breakdown and the timing as a sign for the new year. A sign to live simply, healthfully, consciously. A sign to de-clutter my refrigerator and stock it with more healthy food.

Hence the smaller refrigerator. I can easily see what I have and we no longer go grocery shopping until all the leftovers are gone or anything that can be turned into new dish has been used.

I've stocked the shelves with single-serving containers of yogurt, fruits such as apples and grapes, cheese, baby carrots and spinach, orange juice and milk. With the refrigerator on the bottom, the kids can actually help themselves to healthy snacks with less trouble and put things away, which helps with my goal of getting the kids more independent in the kitchen.

With the refrigerator taken care of and my mind still on healthy changes, I decided to look into something I'd been hearing about for a while: Meatless Monday.

OK, I want you West Texans to take a deep breath and sit on your hands if need be before you read on. Meatless Monday is not about turning us all into vegetarians, but reducing our meat consumption by about 15 percent. The strategy is simple: go meatless for one day every week.

The average American eats about 8 ounces of meat every day — higher than the U.S. Department of Agriculture's recommended 2 to 3 servings per day, each between 2 and 3 ounces. Meatless doesn't mean no protein. Beans, nuts and legumes are great sources of protein without cholesterol (unless you add it in), with little or no saturated fat, and lots of fiber.

Going meatless once a week can reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, according to the Meatless Monday website. It can also help limit your carbon footprint and save resources like fresh water and fossil fuel. The movement aims to help Americans reduce their risk of preventable disease by cutting back saturated fat.

Meatless Monday was inspired by the World War I war effort, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration urged citizens to reduce their meat, wheat and sugar intakes because such foods took more energy to produce than others. Americans willing to cut back — even just one day a week — would be supporting the troops.

Some 10 million families, 7,000 hotels and nearly 425,000 food dealers pledged to observe national meatless days. In November 1917, New York City hotels saved some 116 tons of meat over the course of just one week.

The campaign returned during World War II and beyond, when rationing was promoted to help feed war-ravaged Europe.

Today's Meatless Monday came about in 2003, recreated as a public health awareness program by the nonprofit initiative Monday Campaigns and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for a Livable Future. The campaign has been endorsed by more than 20 schools of public health, including Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia and Harvard; and celebrities like Texan Lance Armstrong, race car driver Leilani Munter and Chef Mario Batali.

The movement has even spread globally to far-flung places like Belgium, the United Kingdom and Israel."

Around here, we do Veggie Fridays, and are fixing to do Fat Tuesdays as well. I have to space them out or Hubby the carnivore will go nuts.

If you need recipes or inspiration: meatless Monday.com

You can also stop freezing meat and can it instead, saving separate deep-freezer energy, and/or rethink what you put in that gargantuan refrigerator, allowing you to maybe downsize that as well.