How giving up meat could save the world
Vegan is the new vegetarian. There are three big fat reasons – environmental, medical and ethical. So overwhelming are the arguments in its favour, people are ditching animal products for plant-based alternatives so that what was once the hard to find is now supermarket mainstream. There are already 542,00 vegans in the UK – and while there are no figures available for here, anecdotally it’s spreading faster than avocado on sourdough.
From Moodley Manor’s Badass Bacon in Dublin to Dee’s Wholefoods vegan sausages and Miam vegan bakery in Cork, plant-based food sources are popping up overnight like, well, mushrooms. Except tastier. Events like Vegfest continue to attract record numbers, and menus are beginning to offer vegan options as standard. What used to be the preserve of Brooklyn and Berlin has gone mainstream, and what used to be considered almost special needs twenty years ago is being normalised. 2016 was a bumper year.
