Food used to be simple. Meat was meat, vegetables were vegetables, and milk was something that came from cows. Then, more and more people started becoming conscious about the effects our diet has on the planet, chefs got more creative with plant-based ingredients, and everything started to change.
Now we have “bleeding” burgers made of beans and beetroot, “sausage” rolls made with peas, and lattes made from oat drink. A restaurant without a vegan dish is now like a pub without drinks, and every time we go to the supermarket it seems there’s a new plant-based product.
This change began when a binary division – those who never ate meat and those who always ate meat – began to crumble. It’s not that everyone suddenly became vegan, but people are starting to become aware that shifting from an animal-based diet to a plant-based one goes a long way in reducing our carbon footprint.
The environmental impact of consuming animal products is certainly clear. At Cop26, the United Nations climate change conference in 2021, the UK’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said eating less meat was key to tackling the climate crisis. The largest analysis of the damage farming does to the planet found that a plant-based diet is “probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on the planet”, according to Joseph Poore, lead researcher at the University of Oxford.
Plant-based eating isn’t just better for the health of our planet than consuming animal products, it’s also good for our individual wellbeing too. Amid a growing awareness of healthy eating, studies have linked consuming animal products with serious health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
The digital era makes it much easier to learn the advantages of eating a plant-based diet, with social media adding to the sense that our eating habits are evolving. Undercover videos, widely shared online, for example, have given people a glimpse of the grim reality of what’s involved in producing much of our meat.
As plant-based eating becomes mainstream, innovations in the kitchen are making it more alluring for our tastebuds, too. Once, vegan options were limited to holier than thou health food shops serving dry nut cutlets, drab salads or something nondescript involving lentils. It was a moral lifestyle but not a very tasty or practical one.
Now, everyone from master chefs to McDonald’s is offering delicious meat-free options. And more people than ever are starting to embrace a plant-based diet. According to an Oatly study, 43% of respondents said that 10 years ago they always ate meat in their meals, whereas only 24% said their meals nowadays always involve meat. And 53% of respondents said they eat one or two meat-free meals each week, compared with 44% a decade ago.
We’ve come a long way – but what’s in store for the future? With the importance of environmentally friendly eating becoming more urgent than ever, how will a climate-positive diet look in years – and decades – to come?
“Meat” that comes from a printer could take the place of farmed meat. In November, 3D-printed “meat” – containing no animal – began to be served as a “cut” of steak when the product was launched in four cities around the world. Lab-grown chicken and cell-based fish – fish meat that is produced from fish cells – will also become more mainstream, along with plant-based eggs.
We are already seeing some unexpected ingredients start to appear on supermarket shelves and restaurant menus. How do you feel about algae protein bars, kelp noodles and seaweed crisps? Look out for cacti in soups, stirred into stews, diced and added into breakfast cereal, or even melted into jellies.
So you don’t need to be vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian, or climatarian to chip in – every time you swap animal products for plant-based foods, you protect the planet a tiny bit.
Looking for dietary advice from a puppet? Watch THE NEW NORM&AL SHOW. Season 1 streaming now. Find out more at oatly.com
