THE VEGANS ARE COMING

What's fuelling the interest in plant-based eating?

- Matthew Ruby and Tani Khara

Between the rise of plant-based sausages and veggie burgers that “bleed”, vegan protesters at supermarkets, and Disney adding hundreds of vegan items to its theme park menus, veganism is in the news. Not to mention the Australian woman trying to sue her neighbours for their meat-grilling ways. For a group once perceived as placid and potentially anaemic, vegans have sure been making a lot of noise. Who are the “new vegans” and what is behind their rise in prominence?

Origin story

The term “vegan” was coined in 1944 by a group of people in the UK to describe a diet excluding meat, fish, dairy, and eggs. In 1988, the UK Vegan Society settled on a definition of veganism that described it as:

“… a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose”.

For many years, veganism had relatively few adherents and was largely dismissed as a fringe movement, if not met with outright hostility.

In his 2000 book, Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain, didn’t mince his words:

"Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living."

Bourdain was by no means alone in his view of vegans. An analysis of stories run in UK national newspapers in 2007 that used the words “vegan”, “vegans”, or “veganism” found that 74 per cent of articles portrayed veganism negatively – describing vegans as hostile, oversensitive, or ridiculous.