Getting to the root of VEGANISM
Jamie Morton discovers why we have been hearing more about vegans and the motivations behind their choices
Gordon Ramsay once quipped he had an “allergy” to vegans — and that he was a member of “PETA” — that being “People Eating Tasty Animals”.
In hindsight, it might seem odd that Ramsay eventually embraced a plantbased diet himself. Or maybe not, so current trends tell us.
Last year he announced he was giving “this vegan thing a try” and added a vegan pizza to the menu at his London-based restaurant Bread Street Kitchen. Then in March, he came up with a plant-based Sunday roast, featuring a vegetable-stuffed Wellington, announcing: “If the roast is going to survive, it needs to evolve to meet the expectations, and diets, of our generation.”
Dedicated vegan eateries and products appear to be popping up everywhere, during what influential magazine The Economist predicted would be the year of the vegan.
You can now walk into a shop and buy a vegan ice cream. At your local supermarket, you’ll find vegan chewing gum, vegan bacon and vegan fried eggs.
Countdown has reported a surge in vegan customers and one Pak’nSave branch in Auckland is putting on regular vegan weeks.
New Zealand — whose biggest exports are still dairy, eggs, honey and meat – recently ranked as one of the most popular countries for veganism.
This year, Gareth Hughes became our first vegan MP.
In 2019, you can be the bassist of Black Sabbath, the director of Terminator, a three-time super heavyweight boxing champion, a race car driver, a pro cricketer, an NFL star, or even the head of Israel’s armed forces, and be proudly vegan.
Documentaries like What the Health, Cowspiracy and The Game Changers have added to the vegan buzz.
What Ramsay once viewed as a movement for spinach-munching militants is shifting to the mainstream.
But after intense standoffs between activists and shoppers at supermarkets, the debate is raging over whether some vegans are going too far to get their message across.
This time next year, veganism will be about 75 years old.
Its origin was as a splinter faction, forming when members of the Vegetarian Society in Britain requested a section of its newsletter be dedicated to non-dairy vegetarianism.
When turned down, Leicester branch secretary Donald Watson founded The Vegan News.
Vegan rolled off the tongue a little easier than some of the other suggestions: allvega, beaumangeur and even dairyban.
It was defined as more of a philosophy or way of life opposed to animals being exploited for food, clothing or any other purpose.
A 2016 poll found the proportion of Kiwis who stated that all — or almost all — the food they ate was vegetarian had grown by nearly a third from four years before, with the sharpest rises coming among 14 to 34-year-olds, North Islanders, and men, although women were still more likely to take up the diet.
Another more recent Colmar Brunton poll found the rate of Kiwis mostly avoiding meat had risen steadily this decade, from 4 per cent in 2014 to 10 per cent last year.
In January, New Zealand claimed the third spot on a list of the most popular countries and cities for veganism — up from fourth place in 2017.
Supermarket chains have certainly noticed. Countdown dietitian Deb Sue says the percentage of vegan customers in stores has doubled over the past year, and the company has responded accordingly. “We’ve already seen a 30 per cent growth in demand for vegan and vegetarian chilled foods, and predictions suggest this is set to increase even more this year. We’re certainly not saying that all New Zealanders are turning into vegetarians or vegans by any stretch, but we’re seeing a huge increase in the demand for more plant-based meal solutions such as vege burgers, ‘mince’ made from plants, and other proteins like falafel.”
The bigger trend tended to be “flexitarian”: consumers choosing to have meat-free days, or incorporating more plant-based meals into their diet while still enjoying meat a couple of days a week.
This week, the NZ Vegetarian Society reported it had now certified over 100 products as vegan under its Vegan Certified trademark scheme.
Pak’nSave’s Royal Oak branch now uses purple tickets to tell shoppers what products on the shelf are vegan. The last time it put on one of its sixmonthly vegan weeks, vegan mozzarella increased in sales by 4400 per cent, vegan Thai curry was up 1400 per cent and vegan nuggets by 4700 per cent.
In March, the Restaurant Association surveyed members on what they thought the biggest hospitality business food trends would be. The move to plant-based food was the stand-out, with one third of the respondents forecasting its growth.
Chief executive Marisa Bidois is confident most businesses have changed what they are offering. “The challenges for the industry are finding new and exciting recipes to fit the brand of the business, potentially chef training in this area as well.”
The Vegan Society of Aotearoa New Zealand has seen soaring uptake in its membership, website visits, magazine subscriptions and Facebook and Instagram likes.
“We are getting more queries from people and we are finding that media come to us asking questions and for comment on events,” spokeswoman Claire Insley says.
The NZ Vegetarian Society’s trademark manager Philip McKibbin says the emergence of alternative proteins
is having a big impact on pushing consumers toward plant-based diets.
And this business is booming — it’s been projected that the world’s alternative-meat industry could be worth $212 billion at the close of this decade — and 10 per cent of the $2.1 trillion global meat industry could soon be wrested away.
Dietitian NZ’s Kath Fouhy says there has been a noticeable reduction
in people eating animal proteins. She cited Beef + Lamb NZ data showing how the consumption of red meat in New Zealand, per capita, had fallen by 42 per cent over the past decade.
Big brands have jumped on the bandwagon, if not just for quick PR value. Last year, Air New Zealand was roasted by the meat industry for serving up the Impossible Burger — boasting a sizzling, bleeding but com
pletely cow-free patty created by vegan and Stanford University chemist Patrick O. Brown.
Burger King has since rolled out the Impossible Whopper and KFC has dabbled with vegan, chicken-like nuggets made by Beyond Meat.
Hell Pizza also tricked customers into trying that company’s fake meat — potentially in breach of food and trading laws — by selling a Burger Pizza with no mention of what was really on the topping.
And this week, Domino’s has launched plant-based versions of its Loaded Burger, Beef Taco Fiesta and Beef & Onion pizzas.
McKibbin points out that even Lone Star — known for its 300g ribeye — is trialling a vegetarian burger with an option to make it vegan.
“As veganism becomes increasingly popular, plant-based alternatives will become cheaper, and consumers are going to have a lot more choice. We’re fast approaching the point where it’s going to be as easy to be vegan as it is to be a meat-eater.”
While veganism has always been rooted in concerns over animal rights, it isn’t the only motivating factor.
“People feel eating less meat and dairy in particular, and more plants, is better for their personal health,” says nutrition writer Niki Bezzant.
Then there is a new wave of “environmental vegans”, who, in a warming world, believe industrial farming of animals is environmentally damaging and unsustainable.
McKibbin suspects it is this group driving the current shift.
“A few years ago, if you’d asked a vegan why they were vegan, the first thing they probably would have said is ‘animal welfare’. These days, you’re as likely — if not more likely — to hear them talking about the environment.”
He says the world’s best-known climate change activist, Greta Thunberg, is vegan.
According to the journal Science, animal farming provides just 18 per cent of our calories, yet 83 per cent of agricultural land is dedicated to it, while greenhouse gas emissions, water and over-zealous antibiotic use pose further problems.
Insley argues the planet can’t continue to support the current level of animal consumption. “When you then look at how much water goes into animal production, again you have to decide that it is not sustainable in the long term.”
Beef + Lamb NZ’s head of nutrition, Fiona Windle, takes issue with that view.
“Modelling undertaken in the US shows that if the entire population of the United States turned vegan, it would result in a reduction of only 2.6 per cent of greenhouse gases.
“Many of the environmental concerns and statistics used as a basis for going vegan are often based on intensive and grain-fed systems which are different to how we produce beef and lamb in New Zealand, which is a low-input, pasture-raised system.”
Professor Alistair Woodward, a University of Auckland epidemiologist who specialises in climate issues, says the effects of dietary change on sustainability are complicated. Some plants, like imported fruit or nuts from water-heavy trees, come at a high carbon cost.
Woodward considers a shift toward the EAT-Lancet planetary diet — half fruits, vegetables and nuts, and the other whole grains, plant proteins, unsaturated plant oils, modest amounts of meat and dairy, and some added sugars and starchy vegetables — is the right direction. The same diet can also be modified for vegans.
Vegans say they still face the perception that their diet is lacking nutritionally.
“You can get all the nutrients you need from a plant-based diet, except vitamin B12,” McKibbin says.
“But luckily, many plant-based milks, like soy milk, are fortified with it, and so are a lot of plant-based ‘meats’.”
He gets most of his from the B12 soy milk he pours on his Weet-Bix; his colleague sources hers from Marmite on toast.
The Ministry of Health’s eating and activity guidelines, or EAGs, have put an increasing focus on plantbased foods. The meat and plant protein food group, for instance, was renamed to put more emphasis on plant and seafood-based proteins.
“The group is now ‘legumes, nuts, seeds, fish and other seafood, egg, poultry or red meat’, which is a reordering of the original list,” deputy director of public health, Harriette Carr, says. “This change reflects the stronger evidence for eating plant and seafood-based proteins, while decreasing red meat intake.”
Yet Windle stresses that plant-only diets typically require people to eat more food energy overall to get the nutrients they need. To get 25g of protein, it could take up to four times the calories of a plant food compared with a moderate serving of beef.
Drawing on an analysis of more than 48,000 people over 18 years old, a recent study found that, while vegans and vegetarians had a 22 per cent lower risk of heart disease compared with meat eaters, they also had a 20 per cent higher risk of stroke.
“We are not completely sure why, but it could be because the vegetarians and particularly the vegans in our study had very low blood levels of vitamin B12 — around half of the vegans were considered deficient,” said study co-author Dr Kathryn Bradbury, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Auckland.
“They all should have been taking vitamin B12 supplements, but only 20 per cent were. It is also possible that there is something else that explains the higher risk of stroke that we saw in vegetarians and vegans, and more work needs to be done to understand this.
“So far, we know that vegans tend to have lower body weight, lower blood pressure and lower blood cholesterol. In terms of actual diseases we have only really been able to look at fairly common diseases, such as heart disease. We need more data for other important diseases.”
Bezzant figures it is just as easy to have an unhealthy vegan diet as an unhealthy meat-based diet. “If you’re just eating vegan junk food and processed stuff, you’re probably not going to be any healthier than you were before. I’d suggest not too much reliance on the vegan meat substitutes like the patties and burgers. Many of those are just processed foods and not particularly great, health-wise.”
Arecent New Zealand study has found attitudes towards vegetarians are less positive than toward meateaters — while vegans are regarded as worse than vegetarians.
Those who lean left are more likely to look upon vegans favourably or neutrally, while those who lean right — males especially — view them more negatively.
People viewing the world as a dangerous place is increasingly linked to poor attitudes toward vegans — something put down to a “perceived symbolic threat” to New Zealand’s social and cultural norms.
Negative perceptions are also linked to a view of the world as a competitive, dog-eat-dog jungle, and the idea of human dominance over other animals.
One of the study authors, Victoria University psychology researcher Professor Marc Wilson, says people still seem to stereotype vegans as “fun-killing” and “moralistic”.
“We often see this preachy characterisation coming through in our research.”
Insley suspects many people think of vegans as annoying, and don’t want to be told how to live, or what to eat.
“However, we are getting to a point where what you eat affects the entire planet. People cannot continue in the selfishness that currently exists.”
Whether that conviction should be taken as far as confrontational public protests is a subject of “huge debate” among the vegan community, she says.
In New Zealand, those moves have included members of the group Direct Action Everywhere lining up in front of meat chillers and anti-animal product stickers being placed on meat packaging at the St Lukes Countdown — which drew an angry response from some customers.
In Australia, lawmakers recently created new offences after a map identifying the locations of farms that were deemed to exploit animals appeared online.
Insley says many see direct action as counter-productive, “especially when you see so many negative comments from meat eaters regarding it.
“These kinds of actions are not really helping to promote veganism, but they may help to force conversations that need to happen. There are some who feel it is an appropriate way to get the message across though, and for that reason I would say that you will see more of them.”
The Countdown protest organisers, Anna Rippon and Deno Stock, say they are going to carry on, “because we believe it works”.
“We’re not out to try and push a dietary choice on to people — we are trying to get people to stop hurting animals.”
They see themselves in a David and Goliath battle, with “non-violent direct action” often the best tool they have.
“The point of these types of activism is to get our message out in such a way that people cannot ignore us.
“People are busy, people are focused. They may know there is something morally wrong with killing animals for food but because our history has normalised it they may not feel an urgency to investigate. Women fighting for their right to vote didn’t get those rights by standing quietly on the footpath making sure no one got offended. Their direct actions stirred the pot in spite of any backlash, and they persevered.”
Despite the growing trend, Wilson can’t see a future where the majority of Kiwis turned vegan.
“Yet, I think we are seeing a reduction in the amount of meat that New Zealanders are eating — and I think there probably is a slow increase in the number of people who identify as vegetarians or vegans.”
The challenges for the industry are finding new and exciting recipes to fit the brand of the business.
Marisa Bidois