Meals on Wheels People will launch a daily vegetarian meal option for homebound clients beginning Monday, Jan. 19.

Vegetarian meals have been available at the organizations 34 neighborhood dining centers for several years, but not in the packaged meals delivered each day to senior citizens and others.

We are receiving more requests for a vegetable-based diet from our homebound clients, said Suzanne Washington, Meals on Wheels People executive director. We deliver nearly 3,000 meals to homebound seniors daily and about 100 of those have requested an all-vegetarian diet.

Meals for homebound clients are cooked at the Meals on Wheels People Central Kitchen in Multnomah Village and shipped daily to neighborhood centers where they are heated and delivered by volunteers. Requests for vegetarian meals were not high enough to warrant creating a special meal package until recently, Washington said.

Baby boomers, who are accustomed to a variety of different menu options, are driving this change, she said. We anticipate that the number of clients requesting the vegetarian option will double within six months.

Meals on Wheels People have delivered food to homebound senior citizens and others since 1970. With the help of 8,500 volunteers, the nonprofit organization serves 5,000 meals daily and 1.2 million meals each year.

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Meals on Wheels adds vegetarian options to menu

Bellator's Georgi Karakhanyan (right), pictured here in a fight against Anthony Leone, is one of a small number of vegetarian MMA fighters. He will fight Bubba Jenkins on Friday in Bellator 132 at Pechanga Casino and Resort

Where Bellator featherweight Georgi Karakhanyan comes from, vegetables are an afterthought in the food pyramid, beer and vodka are table staples -- even for children -- and everyone consumes copious amounts of meat, perhaps in an attempt to ward off the bitter omnipresent cold thats accepted as part of daily life in Russia.

Karakhanyan might still crave a hot dog every now and then -- especially when hes trying to cut weight before a big fight -- but his meat eating days are over. The 5-foot-8, 145-pound featherweight swore off meat about eight years ago after he watched a PETA video and was horrified by how animals were treated.

Karakhanyan, 29, will be the only vegetarian fighter on the Bellator 132 main card when he takes on Bubba Jenkins as the featured featherweight bout at the Pechanga Resort & Casino on Friday night.

Theres a small but devoted community of vegetarian fighters in MMA. Former UFC great Mac Danzig is vegan, and was the first guy Karakhanyan called for advice when he decided to give up meat. World Series of Fighting welterweight Jake Shields grew up vegetarian, and the UFCs brothers Nick and Nate Diaz are both vegan.

But vegetarianism is still unusual in the MMA world where meat-based protein is as much a staple in most fighters diets as vodka was in the land of Karakhanyans youth.

Born in Moscow to Armenian parents, Karakhanyan moved to the United States with his family when he was 10. They eventually settled in Riverside, where Karakhanyan still lives.

Right off the bat, the boy was smitten with two ubiquitous aspects of American life: fast food and sports.

His eyes lit up at every glimpse of McDonalds golden arches, something of a delicacy in Russia, and the place where teenage boys would take their dates. During his earliest days in America, Karakhanyan was a frequent patron at McDonalds, where it became his tradition to devour a large McFlurry before inhaling a burger.

To offset the junk food, he played soccer -- a sport hed picked up as a kid in Russia, cheering on hometown team Spartak Moscow, and dreaming of one day playing for his favorite team, La Ligas Barcelona FC.

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'Insane' Russian fights Jenkins on veg diet