A VEGAN FUTURE
Walk into any supermarket these days, and you will find a wide variety of substitutes for meat and dairy products — corn burgers, rice milk, soy yogurt, and other plant-based foods. The large range of vegan options reflects a rapidly growing trend: more and more people in the West are rejecting products derived from animals. In the USA, for example, the sale of vegan foods has shot up by 600% since 2010. And in Sweden and Israel, the number of people describing themselves as vegan has risen in recent years to nearly half a million — about 5% of the population in each country.(lines 1–6)
This surge has caught the attention of Harvard University sociologist Nina Gheihman, and she is currently engaged in researching its possible causes. As she explains, veganism in the West used to be practiced mostly by relatively small ideological groups. It began with the animal-rights movement, whose members are opposed to any exploitation of living creatures, and are also concerned about the terrible conditions animals suffer in the meat and dairy industries. Over the years, environmental activists too have started advocating veganism. A huge amount of land, they claim, is wasted on raising farm animals. That land could be used much more efficiently to grow fruit, vegetables and grains, and therefore enable the production of much larger quantities of food.(lines 7–14)
As a sociologist, Gheihman is mainly interested in the role played by cultural factors in the rising popularity of veganism — a subject that has received little attention from other researchers studying the lifestyle. So far, she has identified several groups that are helping veganism spread, particularly among young people. One group, whom she calls “educators,” creates resources—Internet sites, films, and books — that are used to share cooking tips and recipes, or to persuade people to change their eating habits. Equally influential, she has found, are celebrities such as film stars, athletes, and famous chefs who are now publicly declaring their preference for vegan food, and promoting veganism as a lifestyle that is both more compassionate and healthier.(lines 15–22)
Despite the increasing popularity of plant-based foods, vegans are still only a tiny minority in Western countries. According to surveys, many more people are interested in adopting the lifestyle but are deterred by the food's reputation for being boring and expensive. That problem has prompted vegan entrepreneurs to think up ways to convince people that this reputation is unjustified. Some, for example, have opened restaurants in city centers, offering office workers vegan alternatives for lunch and dinner at reasonable prices. In another venture, a new British company delivers boxes of tasty vegan snacks to your door every month. While the impact of such efforts is still unclear, activists hope they will help veganism go mainstream — an important step, they believe, towards a better life for us all.(lines 23–31)