The Norwegian military has announced plans to introduce ‘meatless Mondays’ into army diets, in a bid to battle a more unusual enemy – climate change.

Troops will be placed on a strict vegetarian diet once a week to reduce the amount of ecologically unfriendly foods they eat, whose production can contribute heavily to global warming.

Military spokesperson Eystein Kvarving told AFP the move was “a step to protect our climate”. He said: “The idea is to serve food that's respectful of the environment.”

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Kvarving said the initiative was not designed around saving money, but was instead about “being more concerned for our climate, more ecologically friendly and also healthier.”

The new dietary regime has been trialled at some of Norway’s larger bases and military bosses now plan to roll it out across all units. They hope to reduce their meat consumption by 150 tonnes per year.

Their scheme has been praised by The Future in Our Hands (FOH), a Norwegian organisation that aims to reduce the consumption of natural resources by society. FOH claim an average Norwegian will eat more than 1,200 animals in their lifetime.

”The defence ministry deserves a lot of praise because it's taking climate and environmental issues seriously", the group's director, Arild Hermstad told AFP.