The Economist Declares 2019 "The Year of the Vegan"

Happy New Year! One of the most respected business publications in the world has named 2019 "the year of the vegan", and we really couldn't have put it better ourselves.

The prediction comes from The Economist's annual forecast issue, The World in 2019, where correspondent John Parker argues that veganism is moving out of the niche and into the mainstream, with millennials leading the charge.

Parker points out that a quarter of Americans aged 25 to 34 now say they are vegan or vegetarian. Meat giants such as Tyson now hold stakes in vegan brands, a growing number of schools and hospitals are required to offer vegan meals, and chains including McDonald's and TGI Fridays have added plant-based options.

In his own words:

Interest in a way of life in which people eschew not just meat and leather, but all animal products including eggs, wool, and silk is soaring, especially among millennials.

Parker believes vegan meat replacements will do the heavy lifting, taking veganism from "a minority within a minority" to "mainstream". He singles out Beyond Meat's Beyond Burger and the Dutch brand Vivera, whose vegan steaks sold 40,000 units in their first week on sale at Tesco.

His conclusion is one we'd happily frame and hang on the wall (as quoted by Animal Outlook):

If plant-based meats take off, they could become a transformative technology, improving Westerners' protein-heavy diets, reducing the environmental hoofprint of animal husbandry, and perhaps even cutting the cost of food in poor countries.

"Environmental hoofprint" might be our new favorite phrase.

The benefits Parker describes are well backed by science. Oxford University researchers writing in PNAS found that a global switch to a vegan diet would save more than 8 million lives by 2050 and cut food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 66%. And research in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology concluded that plant-based proteins are significantly more heart-healthy than animal proteins.

This is exactly the plant-based revolution that Google predicted back in 2016. Last year 'going vegan' was tipped as the biggest food trend of 2018, a new survey found veganism had surged to 7% of the UK population, and in the US veganism has grown 500% since 2014. Even the CEO of Tyson Foods has seen the need to move beyond meat.

Here's to the year of the vegan. Something tells us it won't be the last.