Is Anyone Still Vegan?
Image Credit: Dose Juice, Unsplash
When I first went vegan in 2018, I felt in good company. People my age were attending Greta Thunberg’s climate riots, Veganuary and Meat-Free Mondays were growing in popularity, oat milk was becoming an option in every major coffee chain (albeit at 50p extra). The notable change of attitudes in the late 2010s towards environmentalism gave me genuine hope for a new generation of plant-based normality, so why does it now feel like we’ve taken a step back?
As a Brighton girl, I come from a bit of a bubble of Green-voting vegan hippies, but was surprised to find a drop in available vegan options in the nation’s capital. Whilst it can’t be disputed that we’ve made some huge steps to make vegan options available, with Plant-Based sections in every supermarket, and a variety of London-based vegan restaurants (notably Mildreds, Purezza, and Meat the Vegans), veganism almost seems to be ‘going out of style’. Many of my formerly vegan comrades have switched over to a vegetarian or pescetarian diet, while what used to be an affordable diet of plant-based nutrition appears to have capitalised into processed meat-alternatives that sometimes even cost more than the meat itself. There has certainly been a rise of ‘white veganism’, forefronted by successful Western big name brands which seem to ignore the effects of colonisation, papering over the origins of plant-based diets in cultures such as Rastafarianism and East Asian cuisine.
Awareness for animal rights also has an incredibly long way to go, with horse races still being viewed as a ‘fun day out’ for the upper/middle class, and animal testing still being used by some of the UK’s highest-grossing companies - including (to name a few, from over 250) Always period products, Miu Miu fragrances, and Olay body care. Equally, general attitudes towards climate protesters such as Just Stop Oil and Greenpeace seem to have become more cynical and condemning in the 2020s, with public figure Greta Thunberg losing her limelight in mainstream media.
Suffice it to say, modernity is overwhelmed with political and social issues. From the rise of MAGA Trump supporters to the ongoing genocide in Palestine, it seems that climate activism and animal rights have been put on the back burner - at least for the time being. In the aftermath of COVID-19, the world entered a political turmoil, with poignant isolated moments including the murders of George Floyd and Sarah Everard sparking necessary debate over Black Lives Matter and Women’s Rights, leaving environmentalism with not much more to show for it than anticlimactic paper straws (a small step which may soon be reversed, at least in the USA). Meanwhile, climate activist Louise Lancaster, who was jailed for four years for a non-violent protest, gained practically zero publicity - is martyrdom really the only way for a movement to gain traction?
That said, the seemingly little progress the climate movement has made should not be a discouragement; recent statistics show that 6.4% of UK adults are planning to follow a meat-free diet in 2025, Cambridge University Students’ Union voted for completely vegan catering in halls in 2023, and even UCL’s own cafes made oat milk the default for hot drinks (although it is interesting to observe UCL has not followed in Cambridge’s footsteps in going completely vegan - perhaps due to the massive variety of students from diverse backgrounds). There is hope yet for a more environmentally-conscious society.