Meatless Monday: Taking Water for Granted

We are VERY lucky in the US.

A heatwave is gripping the Northeast. We complain about the heat, but most of us have the luxury of hunkering down in air conditioning — at home, in the office, or in a cooling center.

We stay hydrated — with easy access to water from the tap, a water fountain, a bottle we carry with us, or a vending machine.

We choose to go Meatless on Monday, because we have the wherewithal to make such a choice — the means to cook or to purchase alternatives to meat.

Imagine not having access to food choices.

Now, try to imagine going without easy access to the most basic necessity of life — clean water. 

Water.org poses the question: “What if you had to walk 3 hours every single day for a sip of water?”

According to water.org, over 780 million people lack access to clean water, more than 2.5 times the population of the US! Some 10 million of those people live in what are considered developed countries. 

The work of collecting water falls mainly to women and girls. In just one day, 200 million work hours are consumed by women collecting water for their families. 

Imagine life without clean, convenient, drinking water.

To learn more about the water crisis and for suggestions about what you can do, click here. 

Please come back next week for a lighter post on my continuing experiments with chia.

Have a great week. Stay cool. Eat well. 

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”