2019 saw much vegan progress

Here at the close of 2019, apartment hunting site Rent.com just ranked Portland, Maine’s largest city, No. 6 on its list of the Best American Cities for Vegans, a fitting cap to a year filled with ever-more vegan food and ever-more-powerful criticism of animal agriculture. For instance, in 2019:

• New York City banned foie gras.

• California’s oldest dairy farm switched to growing almonds.

• Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, launched the Pure Farmland brand of vegan meats.

•  Las Vegas juice bar ColdPress Express made headlines for serving a Maine-style vegan lobster roll.

• Canada dropped milk and meat as stand-alone groups in its food guide and recommended its citizens get most of their calories from plants.

• A United Nations report warned catastrophic climate change is on its way unless Westerners drastically reduce our consumption of animals and animal products.

• And the national media showered Maine’s own Portland Public Schools with positive press after all the city’s elementary schools added daily vegan hot lunch choices in September.

TRENDSETTERS

This year, it was hard to tell whether celebrities were leading the way to vegan eating or trying to keep up. Either way, 2019 saw many prominent people praising plant-based food.

Chef and food personality Eddie Huang went vegan because of the fires in the Amazon; America’s Got Talent judge Simon Cowell went vegan because of his health; and U.K. Prime Minster Boris Johnson went vegan because of his environmentalist girlfriend.

Wherever there was vegan meat in 2019, musician Snoop Dog seemed to be there too, serving vegan burgers at a Grammy’s party or eating them at the newly opened Atlanta restaurant sensation Slutty Vegan. Celtics point guard and vegan Kyrie Irving starred in a TV commercial for Beyond Meat; and New Jersey senator, Democratic presidential hopeful and vegan Cory Booker kept up his plant-based eating even on the campaign trail (including a fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich at the Iowa State Fair).

Meanwhile, actor Jaden Smith launched a vegan food truck in Los Angeles that gives meals to the homeless, while Swedish teenage activist and vocal vegan Greta Thunberg told the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York, “You are failing us.” Thunberg was later named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

VEGAN STATS

Policymakers may have spent 2019 fiddling while the planet burned, but others read the news and decided to eat fewer animals and more plants.

A report issued midyear by the Good Food Institute and the Plant Based Foods Association found retail sales of vegan foods grew 11 percent in 12 months. At the same time, sales of specific vegan categories grew even faster, refrigerated vegan meats jumping 37 percent and plant-based yogurts spiking 39 percent (sales of the animal-based equivalents grew 2 percent and shrank 3 percent, respectively, according to the same study.

Survey results released by the Vegetarian Research Group revealed that 20 percent of adults always or sometimes eat vegan meals when dining out. At the same time, data released by OnePoll and vegan brand So Delicious Dairy Free found 31 percent of U.S. respondents now call themselves “flexitarians,” and more than half of us are trying to eat more plant-based meals. Meanwhile, consumer insight company Numerator’s InfoScout OmniPanel announced that 80 percent of shoppers report having tried vegan meat.

NATIONAL TRENDS

The year’s news and events reflected these changing tastes.

One 2019 event with an outsized dietary influence was the release of the Netflix documentary “The Game Changers,” which follows athletes who eat vegan to enhance performance. The film generated oodles of headlines ranging from “The Game Changers effect: How a star-studded documentary opened people’s eyes to the power of veganism” to “Erections are 500% Better on a Vegan Diet,” a reference to one of the film’s most talked about segments.

During 2019, Walt Disney World and Disneyland added more than 400 vegan and vegetarian menu items at the restaurants in its theme parks, while Houston hosted a giant Vegan State Fair, and Denver organized its first Vegan Restaurant Week. In December, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law requiring hospitals in the state to offer vegan options at every meal.

Meat-heavy diets also generated arrests and satire in 2019. A skit on Saturday Night Live in March featuring Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon poked fun at people who love some animals while eating others. Then in August, massive raids by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement at seven chicken slaughtering plants in Mississippi led to 680 arrests and highlighted how the meat industry relies on questionable labor practices that encourage illegal immigration.

Yet there’s hope for a better future for workers and birds alike. That’s in part because in 2019, Harvard Law School launched the Animal Law & Policy Clinic to train up-and-coming attorneys in the field of animal rights. The future is unknowable, of course, but I predict 2020 serves up a hearty helping of vegan food news.

This column first appeared in the Dec. 22, 2019 edition of the Maine Sunday Telegram.