Ahead of the plant-based curve

Way back in 2009, when I hadn't yet started this blog and was still sharing the Modern Troll blog with Brian, I made a brief post there about how I had suddenly (and entirely unintentionally) become trendy for the first time in my life. It was a response to a New York Times article on how the Great Recession had given rise to a new subculture, the "gleefully frugal," who were taking great delight in such thrifty behaviors as using the library, line-drying clothes, darning socks, and substituting cloth napkins for paper—in other words, all the things I'd already been doing for years.

At the time, I assumed that this was probably the only chance I'd ever get to be ahead of the curve, so I'd better enjoy it. But now, it seems, I've managed to get a head start on the bandwagon yet again. Just a few months after I took the plunge on switching to almond milk in an attempt to reduce the carbon footprint of my diet, I read not one but two articles in as many weeks—one in Vox, one in Bloomberg Businessweek—about how vegan food is taking off in a big way.

Both articles highlight the same phenomenon: the proliferation of high-tech vegan alternatives to animal products. One product both articles point to is the plant-based "Impossible Burger," which is so convincingly beefy that when Brian tried it last month at a local diner, he said he wouldn't even have realized it was a fake if he hadn't already known. Other plant-based businesses that earned a mention in both pieces are the vegan burger joint By Chloe, the fast-casual chain Veggie Grill, and the milk-free cheese alternatives of Daiya. (Their mozzarella-style shreds are the closest we've found to real mozzarella cheese for vegan-friendly pizzas, but still a far cry from the real thing.) And that's not even to mention the various startups working on making a cost-effective lab-grown meat, which is genuine animal flesh that doesn't involve raising or slaughtering an animal.

These foods are a far cry from the traditional image of veganism, which the Vox article describes as "for hippies" and the Bloomberg piece paints still more cuttingly as "a few parts sanctimony and a dollop of joylessness." Instead, they're replicating the decidedly unhealthy treats American omnivores love, like burgers, pizza, sausage, burritos, and bacon. The catch is, these plant-based junk foods are still, essentially, junk foods. They're not really any better for you than the animal-based originals, and can even be worse. The Bloomberg piece argues that there's a risk these vegan goodies will drive plant-based diets away from their healthful origins, so that even as more people eat less meat, obesity and all its associated problems will continue to rise.

However, the Vox piece says the fact that these vegan foods are unhealthy and hedonistic is precisely the point. They're not primarily for people who are already on board the vegan bandwagon; in fact, many dedicated vegans are creeped out by some of the new meat alternatives because they look and taste too much like meat. Instead, these new almost-animal products have the potential to do what veganism has so far singularly failed to do: attract mainstream eaters. We're talking people who care more about flavor than about saturated fats or social justice, people who don't want their every meal to be a political statement, girls and guys who just wanna have fun. And getting these people to go meatless at least some of the time is one of the most important things we can do to avoid climate disaster.

This is pretty much the same argument that I made back in 2010 when protesters were complaining about how Earth Day has lost its ideological purity and been "perverted" by big corporations trying to cash in on the green wave. My take on this was basically: "Don't you get it? The whole reason you see these big corporations as the enemy is because their practices are harmful to the earth. If pressure from the green movement can get them to adopt new practices that are less harmful—even by just a little bit—that's a win." Maybe not a 100 percent perfect triumph, if the corporations are still doing lots of other stuff that's crappy, but that just means we need to keep the pressure up. At least now we have some evidence that it's working.

Chris Kerr, the vegan venture capitalist who's the main subject of the Bloomberg piece, likewise argues that the vegan movement isn't "selling out" by getting in bed with Big Food. On the contrary, this is an essential step if we actually want to change the way people eat. These big companies, he points out, have the resources to help vegan food producers grow and get their products on the plates of more Americans. That means more animals saved from the slaughterhouse, more carbon kept out of the atmosphere, and more widespread acceptance of veganism as a whole, which will help it to grow still more. OK, these may still be companies that do bad things—but this one particular thing they're doing is good, and we should be encouraging it.

So for me, these articles served two useful purposes. First, they offered a little positive reinforcement, reassuring me that my inching toward a plant-based diet is a move that will get plenty of support from an increasingly vegan-friendly society. And second, they taught me about all kinds of fascinating new vegan foods that I wasn't aware of, some of which seem to be vast improvements on the options we've tried to date. One that particularly caught my eye was Numu, a coconut-oil-based vegan mozzarella that, as far as I can tell from the photos and videos on its website, appears to melt and stretch exactly like the real thing. Sadly, it's not available in stores; at the moment, in fact, you can only try it at a handful of hipster eateries in Brooklyn. But it at least proves that it's possible to make a vegan cheese that can truly take the place of real cheese—and that, in turn, suggests that going full vegan, or at least dairy-free, may actually be a realistic option for us at some point in the future.