Vegans gain a place at the table on Thanksgiving
Plant-based options aren’t talking turkey
Jasmine Briones was nervous during her first vegan Thanksgiving. She wasn’t sure how her family of omnivores would react to the plantbased Thanksgiving foods she had made for them.
It was 2012, Briones’ first year of veganism, which her parents thought was a phase, though it eventually led to her becoming the Sweet Simple Vegan. She had done the best she could with the ingredients and recipes she had on hand for vegan biscuits, mashed potatoes and green bean casserole.
“My parents didn’t really enjoy it, but I could do a much better job now,” Briones said. “Nowadays, there’s a plethora of vegan products and recipes to help make Thanksgiving food vegan.”
While strictly vegan Thanksgivings
“What you’re seeing now in supermarkets is the result of greatly increased acceptance in plant-based eating.”
Alex Hershaft Founder, the Farm Animal Rights Movement
probably won’t slow the demand for turkey anytime soon, interest in plant-based foods and Thanksgiving recipes has grown in recent years, and companies are responding to demand.
Krissi Vandenberg is the executive director at the Vegan Awareness Foundation, an organization that offers certification for a range of vegan products. To receive certification, a manufacturer must prove that their product contains absolutely no animal-based ingredients and that it
does not use animal products in processing. For example, sugar manufacturers often use cow bone char to remove impurities from raw sugar. While it may be sparkly white, and perfect for an omnivore’s cranberry sauce, such sugar cannot be considered vegan by the Vegan Awareness Foundation.
According to Vandenberg, when the organization started certifying products in the year 2000, it was mostly approving snack foods for a strictly vegan audience. That trend has since changed – rapidly.
Over the past five to seven years, the consumer base of many vegan products has expanded to include the “vegan curious.” Companies are noticing this shift and have begun seeking certification for more savory and substantial foods, such as frozen entrees, soups and pantry staples, the kinds that could help make a Thanksgiving meal, according to Vandenberg.
While Briones concedes that her first vegan Thanksgiving wasn’t exactly a hit, she said that later attempts have tasted much better, thanks in part to the introduction of new vegan products and improvements in ingredients such as vegan cream cheese, which Briones mixes into vegan mashed potatoes.
Since the Foundation began issuing certification, it has worked with more than 1,000 companies and approved several thousand products, according to Vandenberg.
“We’re seeing right now a lot of things we never envisioned,” Vandenberg said.
This trend has made vegan Thanksgiving foods more accessible for those looking to add plant-based dishes to their meals, and a number of companies have started to fill that need.
No Evil Foods is one of these companies. Though the company has been operating since 2014, they’ve recently expanded production of their plantbased turkey roast made from wheat protein because of overwhelming demand. No Evil Foods named it The Pardon after the presidential tradition of “pardoning” a turkey from slaughter every Thanksgiving, and a portion of sales is donated to Full Circle Farm Sanctuary in Warm Springs, Georgia. So far, No Evil Foods has an 1100% rise in sales on The Pardon from 2018.
“Plant-based eating is clearly on the rise, and consumers are looking for more deliciously meaty ways to celebrate that align with their desire to eat healthier, be kinder and make positive environmental choices,” said Sarah Schadel, co-founder of No Evil Foods.
Meal kit companies are getting in on vegan Thanksgiving as well. Purple Carrot launched its Thanksgiving box this fall. The kit, which includes ingredients for Hasselback butternut squash, ciabatta bread stuffing, roasted brussels sprouts, cranberry citrus cake and “classic gravy,” has sold out. According to Ashley Hocking, head of marketing at Purple Carrot, the Thanksgiving box sprung from customer feedback.
“There is a growing interest in plantbased foods overall, which is very encouraging,” Hocking said.
And then there’s Tofurky, the largest independent producer of plant-based proteins in the U.S., which has been selling its plant-based “turk’y” roasts since 1995. According to company president Jaime Athos, Tofurky will sell about 400,000 of its roasts this holiday season. That’s a steep jump from the 800 sold in 1995.
“The vegan foods were always there,” said Alex Hershaft, founder of the Farm Animal Rights Movement, or FARM. “What you’re seeing now in supermarkets is the result of greatly increased acceptance in plant-based eating.”
Hershaft organized a Thanksgiving celebration in 1975, which he claims is the first of its kind, where about 40 to 50 vegans gathered at the Siddhartha vegetarian Indian restaurant in Washington, D.C. Hershaft, a vegetarian since 1961 and a vegan since 1981, still prefers foods such as lentils to plant-based meats, but acknowledges that meat-like options is helpful in getting people to eat less meat or no meat at all.
“If someone has spent most of their life looking for a piece of meat, it’s less of a sacrifice to eat something that looks and tastes kind of like meat,” he said.
Still, turkey dominates the American plate. The National Turkey Federation says 44 million turkeys were bought and served for Thanksgiving 2017.
“Some people feel that we’re not making enough progress,” Hershaft said. “But this is not just about plantbased Thanksgiving, it’s about the increased acceptance of plant-based eating altogether, and for that I’m grateful.”