Meat Free Monday and Paul's Vegetarian Story

1975: The Lambs Outside the Window

Paul and Linda McCartney stopped eating meat in the mid-1970s, a change usually dated to 1975. Linda's cookbooks followed in 1989, her frozen food brand in 1991 and a guest spot on The Simpsons in 1995, and Meat Free Monday, which Paul launched with his daughters Mary and Stella, began on 15 June 2009.

Paul has told the origin story many times. The family was eating lamb at the farm in Scotland when they looked out of the window and saw lambs playing in the field. The link between the animals outside and the meal on the table was suddenly obvious, and they decided to stop eating meat.

Paul has always described the decision as an ethical one, about not wanting animals killed for food, rather than a health choice. Later campaigns added health and climate arguments, but the animal welfare reason has stayed at the centre of everything the family has done since.

Linda the Pioneer: Cookbooks and Frozen Food

Linda became the driving force. In the 1970s and 1980s vegetarian food in Britain was widely seen as worthy and dull, and she answered that with ordinary family cooking that happened to contain no meat. Linda McCartney's Home Cooking, written with Peter Cox and published in 1989, was a bestseller that put meat-free recipes in kitchens that would never have bought a specialist vegetarian book. Linda's Kitchen followed in 1995, and Linda McCartney on Tour, a collection of meat-free dishes from around the world, came out in 1998, the year she died.

In 1991 Linda launched her own range of frozen vegetarian meals. The first products were British comfort food: golden nuggets, ploughman's pie, pasties and lasagne, several built on textured vegetable protein, designed to sit in an ordinary supermarket freezer. Ross Young's made the range at first, and a dedicated factory opened in Fakenham, Norfolk in 1995. The brand then passed through United Biscuits (1996) and Heinz (1999) before Hain Celestial took it on in the mid-2000s, with the family staying involved in product development. It still carries her name.

Linda's method is the one later plant-based brands have copied: make meat-free food convenient, familiar and cheap enough for a weeknight, and do not lecture the customer.

1995: Lisa the Vegetarian

The best-known pop culture moment of the family's campaigning came on 15 October 1995, when Paul and Linda guest-starred in The Simpsons episode 'Lisa the Vegetarian', in the show's seventh season. Lisa gives up meat and finds allies in Apu, Paul and Linda, who appear as friends of Apu in his rooftop garden. The script was the first for the show by David S. Cohen, later a co-creator of Futurama.

Paul reportedly agreed to appear only if Lisa stayed a vegetarian for the rest of the series, and she has. The end credits hide a reversed recording of Paul reading out Linda's recipe for lentil soup, a joke aimed at fans who remembered the Beatles-era rumours about backward messages.

For many viewers that episode was a first encounter with vegetarianism as a normal choice rather than an eccentric one, and it remains one of the show's most-quoted guest appearances.

2009: Meat Free Monday

Paul, Mary and Stella launched Meat Free Monday on 15 June 2009 as a not-for-profit campaign. Rather than asking people to become vegetarian, it asks them to go without meat one day a week. The campaign cites the 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report Livestock's Long Shadow, which attributed about 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions to livestock, as a key influence.

The small ask is deliberate. It is a first step people can take without changing their identity, and it has been adopted by schools, workplaces and public caterers. The Meat Free Monday Cookbook followed in 2012. In November 2017 the campaign released One Day a Week, a five-minute film with Paul, Mary and Stella, narrated with facts about livestock and climate by Emma Stone and Woody Harrelson. It was largely funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and made with Yann Arthus-Bertrand's Hope Production, and it was timed for that month's UN climate conference.

Paul has lent his voice to animal welfare campaigns outside Meat Free Monday too. In 2009 he narrated Glass Walls, a short film for PETA about conditions inside slaughterhouses, built around his remark that if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian.

Why the One-Day Idea Caught On

Meat Free Monday was not the first one-day campaign. Meatless Monday in the United States was relaunched in 2003, reviving a First World War food-saving idea, and similar initiatives such as Segunda Sem Carne in Brazil (2009) and Green Monday in Hong Kong (2012) run independently. What the McCartneys brought was reach: a famous family, a British focus and a steady supply of recipes and school resources. The idea removes the all-or-nothing choice, and people who would never call themselves vegetarian will often try one day a week.

The campaign has had a policy side from the start. On 3 December 2009, days before the Copenhagen climate conference, Paul spoke at a European Parliament hearing in Brussels titled Global Warming and Food Policy: Less Meat = Less Heat, chaired by Parliament vice-president Edward McMillan-Scott. He shared the platform with Rajendra Pachauri, then chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and asked listeners to give up meat one day a week. Since then the campaign has worked with schools and caterers to add meat-free days to menus, which is probably where it has had its largest practical effect.

The consistency is what fans notice. The message in 2026 is the one Paul and Linda arrived at in the 1970s: animals matter, meat-free food can be ordinary and good, and small changes count.

Mary, Stella and the Family Legacy

Both daughters have built the ideas into their careers. Stella McCartney launched her own label in 2001 and has never used leather or fur, a rule that was rare in luxury fashion at the time. Mary McCartney, a photographer like her mother, has published vegetarian cookbooks including Food (2012) and At My Table (2015), and presented the cooking series Mary McCartney Serves It Up.

Paul has been vegetarian for more than fifty years and still raises it in interviews. His tour riders have long been reported to require meat-free backstage catering for the whole crew.

Linda's photography has been kept in view alongside the campaigning. Taschen published Linda McCartney: Life in Photographs in 2011 and The Polaroid Diaries in 2019, and a retrospective of her work opened at Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow in 2019 before moving to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Her pictures of the family at the farm, horses, sheep and dogs included, are the best visual record of the life that produced the 1975 decision.

Linda's side of the story is being marked again this month. On 25 September 2026 the US Postal Service issues five Linda McCartney Forever stamps, and its announcement describes her as a photographer and activist, putting her campaigning alongside her camera work. Our McCartney release calendar has the details. For gifts in the same spirit, see our gifts for McCartney fans guide, and our list of the best books about Paul McCartney includes accounts of Linda's campaigning.

Where It Shows Up in the Music

Paul's animal welfare views appear in the songs as well. 'Looking for Changes', from Off the Ground (1993), is a direct protest against animal experiments and one of the angriest songs he has recorded. Linda's Wide Prairie (1998) includes 'The White Coated Man', her own song against animal testing.

Earlier, the farm life that led to the change runs through Ram (1971), from 'Heart of the Country' to the rural feel of much of the album, and through the home-made sound of McCartney. Hearing those records with the family's later choices in mind makes them feel even more personal.