Since the earliest days, humanity has fed itself on a couple of major food groups - most significantly nuts, seeds, fruits, and meat. Whether we were hunting or gathering, we were happy and satisfied with our diet. Our bodies seemingly adjusted to whatever was available at the time, interchanging scarce seasonal products for other options.
Vegan Food Versus 'Extravagant' Diets
Today, our dietary options are slightly more extravagant. Whether we are craving tropical foods in the winter or something Christmassy in June, there will be options on hand. Likewise, we can choose to restrict ourselves to certain foodstuffs only - the dietary equivalent of only eating the blue M&Ms. Whether you are on the Paleo diet or the low-carb diet, we all got our food quirks.
Is the food industry growing?
The global food and beverage industry is growing at around 5% a year and global expenditure on food products by consumers is expected to reach US$20 trillion by 2030. Key trends for new product development are in health, convenience, naturality and sustainability.
Let’s talk about one of those specific food crazes some pride themselves on. Vegan food, or eliminating all and any animal products from our plates. For some, it is a real passion. For others, it is merely another political or economic ploy.
Vegan Food: About Money And Dairy, Cattle Industry Collapse
Food and Money A Political Hot Potato
Vegan Wars: About Money And Dairy, Cattle Industry Collapse
What are the trends in food service industry?
- Plant-Based Cuisine
- Beyond Instagram
- Over the past few years, Instagram and other photo-sharing apps have revolutionized the food industry
- Cooking with Cannabis
- Mushroom Mania
- Alternative Proteins
- Food Technology
- Food Waste
- Big Flavours
- Traceability
- Labour-Saving Innovation
Food is an essential commodity in the marketplace that we like to call our global economy. It is precisely this importance to our economies that makes it such a political hot potato - pun fully intended. Small agricultural businesses are struggling hard to stay afloat in a sociopolitical landscape that favors the large, industrial farm organizations.
The real craft of agriculture and livestock farming is disappearing and making room for factory-like processes that serve one primary goal - to keep costs down. Today, food is mostly created using the cheapest available ingredients, allowing for the fattest bottom line. To create most of the stuff we like to stuff down our throats, manufacturers rely on a wide range of cheap ingredients that are preferably acquired in bulk from big, ‘trustworthy’ producers.
In a futuristic-sounding twist, some of those producers have even moved beyond ‘traditional’ farming - instead heavily investing in biotech and genetically manipulated food. From so-called ‘fake meats,’ including fake dairy and fake eggs, to entirely new products that Mother Nature would never have been able to foster on her own, they are no longer hypothetical but factual.
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This has only added fuel to the fire of vegan enthusiasts, who are now able to replace their favorite animal-based foods with completely acceptable yet similar tasting alternatives. In the past few years, the vegan food market has grown with a staggering 10% annually, a trend that is not expected to slow down anytime soon. Big multinationals and small farm businesses alike are jumping on the idea of creating entirely plant-based produce.
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Some have suggested that this means that we are on the verge of the most significant agricultural shake-up that the world has ever seen, with businesses that previously created animal-based products either being forced to adapt or to get out of business altogether. By 2030, the entire cattle and dairy industry might find itself flat on its behind, losing out fast to companies working on so-called ‘precision fermentation’ - or the production of animal proteins using microbes.
Who profits from veganism?
In January 2018, Ethical Consumer magazine warned its readers about vegan brands owned by meat and dairy parent companies. Alpro, one of the largest vegan milk alternatives, is owned by Danone – a French multinational company with a 24.4 per cent share in the global fresh dairy product market.
Bad news for cattle farmers, both big and small. Livestock forms the livelihood of many who can escape hunger and poverty by tending to their animals. Yet it is also bad news for those living in developing regions, including India and Africa. While Westerners might, in some ways, benefit from moving away from animal-based foods, people living in near poverty often rely on it. They will not be able to get the same nutritional value from the more expensive alternatives.
Vegan Food: Follow The Money
Vegan food fanatics often do not understand what impact their dietary preferences have on those living in more impoverished regions. Not only does it severely impact local economies, but it also influences the fragile food balance. In countries like India, a political and economic debate is waging as to what constitutes a proper diet, in particular when it concerns young children. Although the World Health Organisation has included animal products as a crucial element of what we eat, there are political interests at play in deterring those very same products from entering the market.
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In Africa, similar political interests have led to more and more land being allocated to large-scale farming activities. Crops are now growing on fields where animals used to roam - another profit-driven decision that favors non-animal products and severely disadvantages local businesses and the local population.
Do humans need meat?
- As a new study in Nature makes clear, not only did processing and eating meat come naturally to humans, it's entirely possible that without an early diet that included generous amounts of animal protein, we wouldn't even have become human—at least not the modern, verbal, intelligent humans we are
- None of that, of course, means that increased meat consumption—or any meat consumption at all—is necessary for the proto-humans’ 21st-century descendants.
Despite the grandeur and pretense of enthusiastic vegans, it is not their passion and concern for animal welfare that drives the trend that they embarked on. Instead, political interests determine what people are to eat and produce while the big food manufacturers are finding themselves in a position where they can actively steer their consumers to foodstuffs that provide the most significant economic benefits.
The result? Large groups of people that are unwillingly becoming vegan, leading to nutritional deficiencies, biodiversity-destroying monocultures, and a dangerous demand-driving attitude. Veganism is as much about politics and profit as it is about ethics. And now that companies and governments are telling us what to eat, we should be cautious not to let it get out of hand.
Before you go!
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