\n<\/p>\n
L<\/span>et\u2019s get this out of the way, because I\u2019m itching to tell you (again): I\u2019m vegan, and this is our time, Veganuary! Imagine me doing a weak, vitamin B12-depleted dance. Unlike gym-goers, vegans are thrilled when newbies sign up each January, for planetary and animal welfare reasons, but also, shallowly, for the shopping. This is when we can gorge on the novelties retailers dream up: Peta\u2019s round-up for this year includes the seductive Aldi pains au chocolat and M&S coconut kefir.<\/p>\n I need retail therapy, because Veganuary has become quite muted and that\u2019s part of a wider inflection point in vegan eating that I\u2019m sad about. \u201cWhere have all the vegans gone?\u201d Dazed asked in November, and now New York Magazine has investigated, with the tagline: \u201cPlant-based eating was supposed to be the future. Then meat came roaring back.\u201d It details a wave of vegan restaurant closures (plus the high-profile reverse ferret performed by formerly vegan Michelin-three-starred Eleven Madison Park to serving \u201canimal products for certain dishes\u201d), declining sales of meat substitutes and a stubbornly static percentage of people identifying as vegan (around 1%). It\u2019s not new (rumours of veganism\u2019s demise have been swirling around since at least 2024) and it\u2019s not just a US phenomenon; many UK vegan restaurants have closed this year, including my lovely local.<\/p>\n What\u2019s going on? For a start, the Trump 2.0 \u201croaring\u201d meat revival. As the New York Times reported last year, meat sales are up and fewer Americans are interested in curbing their intake. That movement feels partly provocative \u2013 an in-your-face rejection of woke orthodoxies around cutting your carbon footprint, consuming mindfully, or, generally, caring. There\u2019s also the influence of US health secretary RFK Jr, saying what the seed oil-eschewing, raw milk-swilling \u201ccrunchy\u201d tradwives and Maha cranks want to hear. His weird new inverted pyramid of dietary guidelines majors on making steak great again. The American Heart Association was underwhelmed, highlighting the link between red meat and animal fats and \u201cincreased cardiovascular risk\u201d.<\/p>\n People are starting to think it\u2019s too late, so why bother \u2013 they might as well be hung for a lamb chop<\/p>\n Beyond RFK Jr\u2019s tallow-fuelled obsessions, there\u2019s a wellness angle to ebbing interest in veganism. Plant-based eating fits poorly into the relentless protein cult: you can hit your protein goals with plants (even the new, higher US-recommended amount; RFK Jr won\u2019t rest until the entire country can bench press Greenland), but it\u2019s harder. There\u2019s valid concern, too, about UPFs: making \u201cmeat\u201d or \u201ccheese\u201d from plants inevitably involves some ultra-processing. You can be vegan and avoid UPFs (I do! You simply have to live like a 1970s hippy!), but it\u2019s not a no-brainer.<\/p>\n I wonder, though, if other things are happening. I\u2019m concerned that we have reached the \u201cshrug and give up\u201d stage of trying to combat climate breakdown and that\u2019s also why fewer people are vegan. People are starting to think it\u2019s too late, so why bother \u2013 they might as well be hung for a lamb chop. Plus, on climate, there\u2019s a good argument that what individuals can achieve is exceptionally limited and that making us feel responsible is a cynical trick. Why am I diligently washing out coconut kefir bottles to recycle, when half the world\u2019s climate-heating emissions come from the products of 36 fossil fuel companies?<\/p>\n More broadly, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll surprise anyone by venturing that the world feels tremendously, terrifyingly bad right now. People need the odd little treat to face \u2013 and keep facing \u2013 the horrors. Is it so wrong, relatively speaking, to carpe diem and butter yourself a crumpet now and then? Of course not.<\/p>\n All I can say to that, really, is if you\u2019re interested in feeling good \u2013 and who isn\u2019t? \u2013 it feels good to actually do something. My veganism is basically self-interest, by which I mean, I do it for my health: not physical, but mental. Not supporting ecologically disastrous factory farming, not contributing to the regularly reported acts of abuse and cruelty in the meat industry, and making a \u2013 yes, infinitesimally tiny \u2013 contribution to cutting carbon emissions helps ward off my sense of impotence, and despair.<\/p>\n More cheerfully, something else is warding off despair right now: this daft new craze for \u201cfibremaxxing\u201d. Because if there\u2019s one thing vegans know, it\u2019s fibre. So hold on, comrades, keep the mung beans soaking. Our time will come again.<\/p>\n Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s get this out of the way, because I\u2019m itching to tell you (again): I\u2019m vegan, and this is our time, Veganuary! Imagine me doing a weak, vitamin B12-depleted dance. Unlike gym-goers, vegans are thrilled when newbies sign up each January, for planetary and animal welfare reasons, but also, shallowly, for the shopping. This is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[12118,6034,37,1031,2470],"class_list":{"0":"post-42023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-beddington","9":"tag-emma","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental","12":"tag-vegan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}