Notes on not-quite-veganism
At the end of last year, I, a butter-fiend, decided to stop eating butter.
I had recently moved to London and fallen into a job writing for a recycling magazine. In such a climate (pun, unfortunately, intended), I learned hundreds of things that horrified me. That last summer’s Australian wildfires likely emitted as much carbon as all the world’s aeroplanes in 2018. That if we fail to keep global warming under two degrees by 2100, as the data shows is almost inevitable, a full half (!) of all animal and plant species will face extinction. That when permafrost melts, as is happening at an unprecedented rate, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas at least 25 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide over a century. That the albedo effect (when white ice melts, it becomes dark water, which absorbs more heat) exists, making unstoppable climate change increasingly likely. That a third of all the food produced worldwide — about 1.3 billion tonnes — never gets eaten, wasted somewhere along the supply chain or, for the most part, in ordinary consumers’ homes. That food waste is responsible for around 8-10% of global emissions and represents masses of wasted livestock feed and water, and millions of carbon-emitting transport miles.
It is easy to be demoralised in the face of the climate crisis. The figures make it clear that no one person will ever make a dent alone: even if you never drove a car again and braved every winter without heating, you’d be invisible in the larger data. As Roy Scranton accurately has it in a yowly, morbid essay for The New York Times, the best thing you could do for the climate would be to have no children, and die sooner rather than later — but obviously, that’s not going to work. We need another way of living gently with the world.
By the time I picked up We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, by Jonathan Safran Foer, I had been wondering what that way was for several months. All my climate-minded actions — maniacally re-sorting the recycling bins at work, choosing the Tube over Uber every time, reusing plastic bags until desiccation — felt finite; individual. No one would reuse their bags because I had. None of my friends were choosing trains over cars, and when I moved away from London, a car would often be the only choice. I wanted a change that would make my life a lot, rather than a little, greener, and I wanted something powerful enough to make others reconsider their lifestyles, too. Foer’s argument offered an elegant solution.
His book makes a staggering case for reducing the human consumption of animal products. Globally, he notes, we use 59% of arable land to grow food for livestock, not people. Almost one-third of all the fresh water used on earth is used for livestock. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has noted that if cows were a country, they would have the third-highest greenhouse gas emissions in the world, after China and the United States. Emissions from animal agriculture make up at least 14.5% of all global emissions, according to the UN, a percentage approximately equivalent to all worldwide transportation (including cars, trains, buses, ships, and planes). But a study by two environmental advisers to the World Bank plausibly puts the figure as high as 51%, when factors like emissions from livestock respiration, undercounted methane, and the effects of deforestation to clear land for livestock are taken into account. Either percentage is an enormous reason for pause.
In light of the facts, my partner and I made a new year’s resolution. We would not eat animal products before dinner during the week: no meat, no fish, no eggs, no dairy. On weekends, we allowed ourselves eggs for breakfast and one meat-based meal, and if we were at someone’s house, regardless of the day, we would eat whatever we were served.
To begin with, it was not easy. I am a keen cook, but to more or less eliminate several pillars of your flavouring inventory — Parmesan, butter, fish sauce, honey — as well as eggs and meat, takes some adjusting. To capitalise on dinner leftovers, we found ourselves eating entirely vegan during the week, which felt like more than we’d bargained for (Rhys: “I never want to see a chickpea again”). It turned out Rhys, my partner, was violently allergic to fake meat of all stripes, an inconvenient truth. There was the usual quota of bad days, when the satisfaction of eating for the planet could not outweigh my grumpiness at not being able to scarf six Reese’s peanut butter cups. Baking, one of my greatest pleasures, felt undeniably limited. And I found myself repeatedly met with the argument that it’s all very well to advocate for a plant-based diet, but not everybody can afford to feed a family of six on cashew milk and avocados. (To which I can only say, no, but most people will save money feeding a family on beans, canned tomatoes, and rice, and the fact that someone in a food desert currently cannot access anything other than factory-farmed chicken nuggets does not absolve the middle class of doing its part to ensure fresh vegetables eventually become so widespread, they’re more readily available and cheaper than those nuggets.)
Despite the challenges, our new diet has been easier to adapt to and more fun than we expected. With a rotation of fallback meals, we’ve found it straightforward to cook within the restrictions. We’ve saved hundreds of dollars and, having both lost weight, are feeling figuratively as well as literally full of beans. I’ve become skilled in the art of tofu (dry it completely first, lightly flour, shriekingly hot oil), and learned which ingredients will approximate the depth and complexity of Parmesan, without the guilt (soy sauce, olives, caramelised onions and mushrooms). We have never had to turn to the sort of products you couldn’t find in a standard UK/NZ supermarket (nutritional yeast, I’m looking at you).
Above all, we’ve discovered how much food is unexpectedly, and delectably, vegan. Soy-dressed snow peas and cashews over gingery rice; banana pancakes, leaching their own caramel in the pan; homemade focaccia, pooled with olive oil and sea salt; peaches so juicy they should be eaten in the bath; velvety beans in herb oil; chilli-barbed tofu; peanut butter from the spoon. I cooked some outstanding things I never would have otherwise (see a partial list at the bottom of this essay). Whenever we felt we couldn’t look at another bean, we made a leftover-less, non-vegan dinner — ham and pea pasta; two soy-honeyed salmon fillets on rice — and every weekend, I let myself bake something without restrictions.
I write to tell you such a diet is possible and enjoyable. I write to tell you it is more delicious and various than you could imagine, that you will not feel hungry or deprived, and that you will not miss bacon as much as you think. I write to ask you to consider how small a sacrifice it is — meat and dairy at one meal in every three — for the cause of preserving a livable world, for yourself and your loved ones just as much as people in foreign countries. I urge you to try it, even one day a week — to breakfast on toast with peanut butter instead of eggs, to have oat instead of cow’s milk in your coffee, to choose falafel instead of ham sandwiches for lunch, to snack on fruit instead of yoghurt, dark chocolate instead of milk. You can have whatever you want for dinner.
In a section of his book called “Dispute with the Soul,” Foer sets out the most crucial part of his entire argument: you do not have to eat perfectly to be doing something that helps. “What is the opposite of someone who eats a lot of meat, dairy, and eggs?” asks one voice. “A vegan,” replies the other. “No,” comes the response. “The opposite of someone who eats a lot of animal products is someone who is attentive to how often he eats animal products. The best way to excuse oneself from a challenging idea is to pretend there are only two options.”
Foer advocates eating no animal products before dinner every day — an admirable goal. But I would be lying to say Rhys and I did this. As well as our weekends, we allowed ourselves cheat meals when there was an occasion. We ate birthday cake with friends. We crowned the Lunar New Year as is only right, with a tableful of chilli-oiled pork dumplings. A holiday to Italy, shortly before holidays to Italy were indefinitely curtailed, involved mozzarella and gelato, all the sweeter because they were a treat. Allowing ourselves to fall off the wagon occasionally has kept us sane; I refuse to believe it negates all our vegan meals. Maybe eating vegan-except-for-dinner won’t work for you; what about vegan two days a week? Vegan just for breakfast? Vegan just at home? What about the vegetarian burger instead of the beef one, just every second time?
According to a 2019 report by Colmar Brunton, around 3% of New Zealanders eat a full-time vegetarian or vegan diet (it’s higher in the UK, predicted to reach 25% by 2025). They’re an important group. But everybody eating slightly fewer animal products is far more powerful than 3% of the population eating none. A thousand households swapping out spaghetti and meatballs for bean chilli just once a week means a thousand fewer packets of mince sold, and a thousand more cans of beans. It likely also means more than a thousand people telling someone outside their household, with rightful pride, about the change they’re making. That’s how a shift begins.
Halting climate change will take government involvement. We need emissions taxes, the policing of industry, funding for the green economy. But consumer power matters too. You vote with your wallet. If you buy an SUV, you’re providing a market for SUVs rather than electric cars. Your actions tell the supermarket it’s going to sell more chicken than tofu. Individuals might not be able to save the world alone. But enough of us doing something small — especially in a field responsible for as great a percentage of emissions as animal agriculture — is both helpful and meaningful. I also think we have a moral responsibility to act: it is far too late to pretend climate change won’t affect the lives of millions, including you.
You will be eating your next meal within hours. Could you make it planet-friendly?
Think someone you know should read this?
Two other things you should read
An interactive New York Times article examining the environmental impacts of various animal products
An extract from David Wallace-Wells’ excellent book, The Uninhabitable Earth
Plus the Foer book!
A short list of some favourite vegan recipes
A perfect focaccia (skip the butter topping, or just do it for dinner)
An everyday dhal (use oil in place of butter and top with coconut yoghurt/coriander/any roast vegetable you please)
A v easy bean chilli (don’t forget most corn chips are vegan)
A bowl of joyful noodles (add a side of crispy tofu for substance)
Happy eating!