This message comes from the Science of Happiness. Science shows that love is expansive. Academy Award winner Gina Davis explores why people love, how love grows, and how it sustains them. Subscribe to the Science of Happiness wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so here's a question for you. Is veganism losing its luster? Being a vegan or becoming a vegan or going vegan was an aspiration for people for a long time, but it's hard. And every vegan, well, almost every vegan will tell you that it's hard. There's a sort of nihilistic strain of like everything sucks, this sort of party at the end of the world vibe. And there's certainly been trend pieces. Looking at tanning beds are back. Smoking has social cachet again. And there have been some articles about fur being back on runways. This kind of sense of like, I'm going to enjoy what I have left. I think sort of like cheekily depressing. And, you know, that's bad. Like, I think veganism, I think it requires optimism. Vegan or not, what you're eating says a lot about your values and your politics. And it seems like that's shaping the restaurant business. Or is it? I know, I know, you might have been expecting to hear Brittany. She's out today, so I'm stepping in. A few things to know about me. My name is Danielle Kurtzleben. I'm a White House correspondent at NPR, and I eat meat. In fact, I grew up on a pig farm in Iowa. It wasn't until I got to college that I met my first vegan. As you probably already know, someone who follows a vegan diet doesn't consume any food derived from animals or animal products. So no meat, seafood, dairy, eggs. Some vegans don't eat honey either. But even as I met more and more vegans, it felt like a niche subculture to me. Until the 2010s, when it felt like suddenly everyone and everything was becoming plant-based. From Beyonce... In today's health report, what Beyonce eats. The celebrity was on Good Morning America today to talk about her new vegan diet. to, well, meat itself as plant-based meat alternatives started to hit the market. Beyond Meat expected to report results after the bell today. The stock has been soaring. Beyond Meat shares have been on a tear, up a whopping 840 percent since it went public, making it the best-performing IPO this year. Veganism wasn't just becoming a shorthand for taking care of your health and the planet. It seemed like a future people wanted to financially invest in. At its height in 2020, the U.S. plant-based protein retail market made $1.54 billion in sales. But every boom has its bust. I think the first thing that I started to notice was that vegan restaurants in New York, where I live, seemed to be closing at a rate that was notable. And the number of openings was not replacing them. That's Rachel Sugar. She writes about food and culture and recently wrote a piece for New York Magazine about the boom and bust of vegan restaurants and plant-based industries in general. And I also talked to people in the restaurant industry and started to see these menus that were, you know, very, very meaty. There were all these steakhouses that seemed to be opening and this kind of throwback to a very velvet, decadent, bloody aesthetic. She writes that between 2012 and 2020, the number of self-proclaimed animal-free food and drink products launched in the U.S. catapulted by 282 percent. But now, alternative meat brands like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are losing money, and meat sales are at a record high. Some people become vegans because they see it as a principled act. And that's admirable and understandable, but that's not the same as becoming a vegan because it's cooler, because you think it's going to change your life. That's Mark Bittman, longtime food journalist and former New York Times columnist who has written about veganism since the early 2010s. I just want to remind everyone that spaghetti with tomato sauce is vegan as are like a billion other quote unquote normal dishes and that we all eat vegan some of the time The question is how much more un do we get not how pure we can be I'm getting into it with Rachel. Hi. And Mark. Hi, Danielle. To get a better sense of why vegan business is on the decline and what that says about us. you're listening to it's been a minute a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident i'm danielle kurtzleben in for britney loose so rachel you saw this decrease in vegan businesses in new york what do the actual numbers look like among people identifying as vegan? That's sort of a constant tricky thing. The numbers are small and they fluctuate for the last like 30 years. You're sort of hovering between 1%, 3% and the boom in interest and enthusiasm and options did not seem to lead to a boom in people at least on survey data, people identifying as vegan. Curious about your thoughts, Mark. Have you been following this sort of boom and bust, I guess, of how the culture sees veganism or how businesses are operating around veganism? I don't see it as boom or bust. Rachel covered this stuff beautifully, but something that is causing a lot of noise to be made doesn't mean that people are changing their behavior. And I think that's probably universal, but it's especially true in the United States where we've always, you know, jumped on bandwagons for 10 minutes and then jumped off again. And going vegan was an aspiration for people for a long time, but it's hard. And almost every vegan will tell you that it's hard. Americans set themselves up for failure by becoming Puritans. Not everyone, obviously. But, and then it's like, oh, well, that didn't work. I'll go back to eating in a bro restaurant on Broad Street that's like velvet, as Rachel said. You know, it's like the culture doesn't have to be all meat all the time or vegan. It needs to be on the spectrum, and the spectrum needs to move towards the plant-based end of things. But seeing things in black and white is just sort of how we often do things, and it's lunacy. Yeah, and when you say needs to, you mean needs to because of sustainability? Studies show vegan diets cause 75% less in greenhouse emissions, water pollution, and land use than meat-rich diets do. I mean health also, but sustainability for sure. Right, and of course there are real health benefits to veganism and going plant-based in general, like healthier gut biomes, stronger immune systems, lower rates of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. I'm wondering how a broader interest in veganism changed over time. My understanding is like, you know, pre-2010s, a lot of vegans, maybe most, it was an ethical stance. And it was about the environment or it was about animal welfare. It was about sort of not prioritizing humans over other animals. It was about the sort of kindness and compassion. And then you sort of get this rise of, actually, it's good for you. Actually, it makes you, you know, hot and thin. It's this beautiful, aspirational celebrity California thing. And you start to sort of get, you know, quote unquote, health vegans. And that's oversimplified because there are like real health benefits and you see different populations and sort of different demographics get really into veganism for health reasons that are not about being sort of thin and beautiful, but are about sort of reclaiming health from food deserts and systems of oppression. But I think sort of the dominant cultural narrative was like, oh, being vegan is good for you. And it's something rich celebrities do. And you're going to feel so great. And you're going to eat your bowl of whatever your salad, smoothie something in a bowl and it going to feel really good And I think that gets tricky because the way that trends work is that they change from plant to you know actually the recommendations are wrong We need to be eating so much protein. We need like just unfathomable amounts of protein. We should be blending chicken breasts into smoothies to just like keep that protein up. Right. And to clarify, you're talking about a more extreme end of this protein maxing trend. Right. And we move away from a lot of cardio. You know, the sort of fitness trends changed. Now everybody's lifting heavy, which does like necessitate sort of more protein. And so I think as health trends change, people who sort of entered eating a vegan diet because it was a health trend move on to other health trends. And the health trend has shifted. Well, this is a thing I wanted to ask you guys about. You're talking about trends. And I think about, you know, when I was young, everything was nonfat. Then Atkins was big. Then there's keto and there's paleo. Now everybody's avoiding highly processed foods. But veganism doesn't seem like it's quite one of those things. Those are highly branded, in many cases, diets. So how does veganism compare to those sorts of trendy diets that pop up? I mean, veganism isn't nonsense. Plant-based eating isn't nonsense. Plant-based eating is smart and the way of the future. Full-time veganism is challenging and not necessarily something to aspire to. There's nothing wrong with aspiring to it, but if you then fail at achieving it, you have to watch out for the backlash. There's certainly some heavy baggage associated with vegans. And there always has been, you know, the jokes about, you know, how do you know you're talking to a vegan? Don't worry, they'll tell you. You know, that sort of thing. That vegans are pious or strict or moralistic. Is that baggage still present? I think that that baggage is still present. I don't think it's related to, like, real-life behavior of vegans. And I don't know if it ever really was. But I mean, certainly like this idea that you're going to be a vintage PETA activist and, you know, throw red paint on your animal eating enemies or something, which I don't think is PETA's current strategy and I don't think is really happening. But yeah, I think that baggage is still present. And I think about this conversation I had with my mother a lot when I first met my husband, who was vegan. And she was like, yeah, but he doesn't think everybody should be vegan, right? I was like, well, I mean, well, he kind of does, though. Like, he's not obnoxious about it, but of course he thinks that or he wouldn't do it. Like, my hunch is that even if the vegans that you're with are super accommodating and don't say it, like, do they think it's great that you're eating, you know, a steak? No. And I think that's kind of an intractable problem. Coming up. If everybody ate fewer animals, obviously we'd kill fewer of them. And we'd slow climate change. And we'd slow environmental degradation. And we'd make ourselves healthier, not coincidentally. So it's very rare to find something that's good for you and for everybody else and the planet at the same time. But eating less meat is one of those things. After a quick break. This message comes from Normal Gossip, a Radiotopia podcast. Join host Rachel Hampton as she shares juicy, strange, funny, and utterly banal gossip about people you'll never know and never meet. Subscribe to Normal Gossip wherever you get your podcasts. If I'm being super stereotype-y, there's a political divide in how people eat. And I tend to think I think a lot of people do that veganism is more of a lefty thing and that filling up on steak and whole milk is maybe more of a right wing Maha thing. Is that is that a fair summary? I mean, is it more left leaning people who are gravitating towards veganism these days? I think you can say you vegan and no that doesn say anything about what you think about you know vaccine policy But I do think it left coded in the US And my sense is that is not new I think in terms of that very far sort of carnivore like I eat only steak and sticks of butter does have a right codedness. But I think this sort of protein mania does really cut across political beliefs. I mean, we've talked about here how veganism is, you know, how you might eat. But for some people, it's a political choice. It's an ethical choice. For some people, it's a whole identity. So whatever cultural shifts there have been around veganism, or as it's called sometimes plant-based eating in the U.S., how has what it means to be a vegan shifted? And maybe Let's start with you, Rachel, about the more immediate recent history. And Mark, I'm curious what you have to say about the longer view. I think there are a lot of vegans who would very much say it is not a diet, but it is a sort of all-encompassing sort of life-guiding approach. I'm interested in the diet part of it primarily because that feels incredibly like immediate and concrete and inclusive in terms of like everybody eats, so what are they eating? So that's sort of my like interest. It's sort of a major understatement. Like the vibes right now are bad, like generally. And I think... You mean around veganism or just in general? In the world. Okay. And I think that matters. There's this strain, at least among younger-ish people, there's this sort of nihilistic strain of like, everything sucks, like this sort of party at the end of the world vibe. vibe. And there's certainly been trend pieces sort of looking at tanning beds are back, you know, smoking has social cachet again. There have been some articles about fur being back on runways, this kind of sense of like, I'm going to enjoy what I have left, like cheekily depressing. And so in that sense, I think, you know, that's bad. Like, I think veganism is sort of, I think it requires optimism. I think it requires like my tiny individual choice, which obviously doesn't change a whole lot. What I eat, I'm one person, but this is what I'm going to choose to eat. This is how I'm going to try to spend my money. This is what I'm going to try to support. Like that's an optimistic thing to do. And I think that kind of optimism is sort of cringe and like of a time that isn't this moment. And I think this moment is not a conducive one to sort of asking people to make little choices for, you know, plotting incremental change. But I hope that that changes. And I think sort of looking at a long view, it will by necessity or otherwise. I love that answer. Well, same answer. I mean, we kill something like 10 billion animals a year in this country. If everybody ate fewer animals, obviously we'd kill fewer of them. And we'd slow climate change and we'd slow environmental degradation and we'd make ourselves healthier, not coincidentally. So it's very rare to find something that's good for you and for everybody else and the planet at the same time. But eating less meat is one of those things. Mark Bittman and Rachel Sugar, thank you so much for talking with me today. This has been a delight. It was fun. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah. That was Mark Bittman. He's a longtime New York Times columnist and cookbook author. And Rachel Sugar, a food writer whose story, How Veganism Got Cooked, you can read in New York Magazine. And I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, a White House correspondent for NPR. You can come hang out with me on the NPR Politics Podcast and read my political analysis at npr.org. This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by Alexis Williams and Skylar Swenson. It was edited by Nina Potok. Our supervising producer is Barton Girdwood. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanguini. All right, that's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben in for Brittany Luce, and thank you for listening.
