Sir Paul McCartney will go head-to-head with Jamie Oliver today with the launch of his first cookbook, aimed at persuading people to eat less meat.
The former Beatle, who over the weekend celebrated his wedding to Nancy Shevell with a star-studded party in New York, has co-written The Meat Free Monday Cookbook, which is based on his family’s 2009 campaign to make people go meat-free for one day a week.
In launching his book just weeks before Christmas, Sir Paul will be taking on celebrity chef Jamie Oliver at his own game.
Mr Oliver’s new cookbook - Jamie’s Great Britain – was last week tipped by William Hill to be this year’s Christmas best-selling book. His 30-Minute Meals book last year also topped the Christmas best-seller list.
However Sir Paul’s publisher, Kyle Books, has big ideas for the musician’s cookbook.
Around 40,000 copies of 240-page book have already been shipped to UK stores, and more are being printed. The book will also be launched internationally in Australia, France, Germany, Holland and Finland later this year. A US launch is scheduled for February.
Royalties from the book will go directly to finance the Meat Free Monday campaign.
Sir Paul’s book contains some if his favourite vegetarian recipes but he has enlisted a little help from his celebrity friends such as Twiggy, the model, and Kevin Spacey, the actor, who have also contributed recipes.
Sir Paul’s contributions include recipes for ‘refried bean tacos’ and ‘super vegetable salad’. Twiggy has given a recipe for ‘mozzarella pasta’ while Mr Spacey has ventured a recipe for ‘lentil stew with pan-fried halloumi and pomegranite’.
Inspired by a United Nations report, Sir Paul and his family launched the Meat Free Monday campaign in 2009 as a means of helping to slow climate change.
The campaign came about after Sir Paul, who is a long-time vegetarian, discovered that the global livestock industry is responsible for up to a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, either through nitrous oxide from animal slurry, methane from animals’ rears and carbon dioxide from crops to feed farmed animals.
In the book’s foreword, Sir Paul explains how by going vegetarian for just one day a week, people can “make a huge difference for the better and set a new pattern for the future of this beautiful planet that we all inhabit”.
Speaking about the launch Sir Paul said that the book “goes to the heart” of several important political, environmental and ethical issues, such as pollution, health and the ethical treatment of animals.
In the foreword, he also suggests that going meat free one day a week also has economic advantages.
“In difficult economic times, people discovered that have at least one meat-free day in their week helped their family budget,” he says.
Sir Paul’s first wife Linda, who died in 1998, became a figurehead of the vegetarian movement in the UK. As well as writing several vegetarian cookbooks she started the Linda McCartney Foods company, which specialized in vegetarian and vegan foods.
Oxfam has found that replacing red meat and vegetables just one day a week could cut an individual’s annual emissions by the equivalent of a 1,160-mile car trip.
