At the risk of seeming unreasonable, may curses rain down on the fair-weather vegan. Vegan food sales are slipping. The US brand Beyond Meat (home of the “bleeding” burger) has reported a drop in sales of almost a third. Elsewhere, fake-meat producers are struggling, vegan restaurants are closing, vegan ranges are being trimmed or dropped… well, you get the picture.
Is that it, then? Was the “vegan revolution” a false dawn?
Even harder to take is the barely veiled schadenfreude, as if the cost of living crisis had only affected vegan products and businesses, and nothing else. The presumption that the problems lie exclusively in meatless fare being costly, unappetising and over-hyped. What about all the fair-weather/fake vegans just in it for the fad – should the almighty consumer be totally let off the hook?
That’s what I mean by “unreasonable”, because this was my instant reaction: we should have known the vegan-newbies would turn out to be a bunch of flakes. Fake vegans (widely slammed as “fegans”) aren’t anything new, but these fair-weather types are just as bad. I’m a “mere” vegetarian, but at least I stuck with it. People like me are lifers – we don’t slope off after posing for a few selfies with jackfruit burritos.
Moreover, I’m unconvinced that certain criticisms relate only to meat-free products. Expense: in my experience, vegan products are significantly more costly only in relation to low-quality meat equivalents, not the decent stuff. Over-processing: have you looked at the ingredient list on your meaty microwave meal lately? We are, after all, talking about mass-produced convenience food here: be these items meat-based, meat-faked or meat-free, no one is simmering secret tomato sauce recipes on a Tuscan hearth for your unparalleled consumer delight.
Maybe this fakery is the problem, some might cry, including veteran chickpea-soakers. There’s no denying that fake meat, as distinct from other vegan-vegetarian fare, is polarising. All I can say is I’ve eaten nice fake meat and I’ve gnawed on nightmarish substances with all the flavour and consistency of boil-washed inner tubes. Good or bad, I’d take any of it any day over what happens in the industrial meat industry.
That’s my mindset as I look at the dismaying pushback against fake meat, veganism and the rest. That this is what happens when you bleach out all the ethics of food and reduce it to a lifestyle decision. That, in the well-intentioned drive not to bore or information-overload the consumer, you ultimately lose them.
That vegan-quake of recent times was never just about “yoof”. Older people like me were thrilled to see attitudes and habits changing, for animals and for the planet. Obviously, the cost of living crisis cannot be ignored; nor, my stropping aside, is anyone seriously decrying consumer choice or product fatigue. And maybe the future is more flexitarian than purely vegan or vegetarian.
But how are progressive food companies meant to originate, build and survive if this market is so fickle? Who’s going to take a chance and invest in the next great innovative vegan product now? New movements are only the start – the shiny, easy bit. Sometimes it’s not enough to come when you’re called. You’ve got to commit for the long haul.
• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist
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