Independence From Meat Day 2024 is on Thursday, July 4, 2024: where did the saying 3 square meals a day originate and why?

Thursday, July 4, 2024 is Independence From Meat Day 2024. Credit Solutions: Ditching Meat on 'The Other Independence Day ... Independence from Meat Day. Get the best Credit Tips at Credit Visionary

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Each day to go meat-free, whether it is just during the day or perhaps a more permanent lifestyle choice, Independence From Meat Day is the chance to test a vegetarian lifestyle and find out the way it goes!

In the days of the old wooden sailing ships, food and fresh water was always a problem, therefore feeding a hardworking crew would have been very difficult. Meat and fish was dried and salted to be stored in barrels. There would have been few vegetables once the ship had been at sea for any length of time. Fruits were unheard of except perhaps apples stored in barrels. Hence the expression "one bad apple" would contaminate all within the barrel. It must have been soul destroying to open up a fresh barrel of apples only to find that they were all bad and had to be thrown over the side. With no fresh vegetables and little fruit, the sailors diet was seriously deficient in vitamin C. The result was a common disease known as scurvy. To overcome this Royal Naval ships crews were given a daily ration of Lime juice and even in my days in the Navy this ration is still made available when certain arduous conditions prevailed. This was noticed by the American before the war of independence and hence the English are still referred to as "Limeys" to this day.

Larger ships would take to sea with live animals to be butchered and eaten at a later date and as the journey length was dependant on the wind and weather, it would have been extremely difficult to plan domestic arrangements with any certainty. In bad weather with the ship being tossed like a cork on the waves, the wood burning stove was a dangerous device which if it got out of hand would consume the wooden ship. In extreme conditions hot food was difficult to provide and yet most foods would require cooking to kill the bacteria and make them edible. The ships carpenter would make plates for the crew and the easiest way to make a plate was to cut a square section piece of wood. Square shaped plates could be stowed away easily and wooden ones would not break irrespective of how violent the ships movement might become. There was no sort of turning machine to make round plates and that would have been seen as an unnecessary expense.

So when the sea state allowed and there was sufficient food available, every effort would have been made to provide the crew with a hot edible meal. This would have been collected from the galley and eaten with relish on the mess deck table utilising the square section plate. Therefore if you achieved "Three Square meals a day" you were doing very well. An expression still used today in everyday English.

Freshmen = Fresh meat?

Hi! I'm starting my sophomore year soon and last year i was so nervous to start high school, too! It's really nothing to worry about. You will find that you will have more freedom and independence in high school and you can really start to develop who you are. You will find a group of friends. There are a lot of different groups and chances are, you will fit in with one or many of them. My problem was being really shy and scared to make friends, but everyone is like that. So, try to talk to people. It will be much better than middle school, i can promise you that. Everyone is nervous for at least the first day, no matter what, but you'll get through it and it won't be bad at all. You'll wonder why you were even nervous.

Some tips are: get some confidence to make friends, be organized, don't worry, memorize your locker and combination, maybe look at a map of the school before hand and don't be scared to ask people for help finding a class, get involved in at least one club or sport, have fun!

My year was great, i learned a lot, made friends, joined an activity, and got a boyfriend 3 years older than me. lol. Good luck with everything! (You won't need it though!)

:)

Vegetarians, have you thanked the 7th Day Adventists lately?

Poet Percy Shelley and his wife the novelist Mary Shelley were vegetarians long before this. They weren't alone. The earliest vegetarians I know of in Britain (at the end of the 1700s) were linked to the radical left (anti-monarchy, anti-slavery, pro-women's rights, pro-democracy, pro-American independence etc).

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Your Add Dets are very ill-tempered in response to my simple statement of fact - quite uncalled for indeed. I pointed out that vegetarianism had antecedants at least 100 years before the SDA were promoting it so where IS credit due? It no more kills me to give due credit than it apparently does you.

Oh, and I passed over the fact that in addition to being politically radical, the Shelleys were also atheists. Wanna give a shout out to 18th century leftist atheist vegetarian poets LEW? Perhaps the SDAs owe a debt to them.

GBS (1856-1950) was indeed a vegetarian AND a socialist AND a Christian, although of course he was later than the 18C radicals (though before the SDAs). As an elderly man he said that when he first took meat from his diet he was told by his doctors that it would kill him. When asked whether or not he had ever gone back to them to show them what an advanced age he had reached as a vegetarian, he said "I would, but they all died long ago".

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Be stunned then. I have said nothing here to justify such a tirade from you. I add nothing in response as a thread like this is no place for undignified squabbling.