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There are so many free resources available online for people wanting to explore vegan cooking; here are some favourite vegan recipe blogs:
This year is looking set to be Veganuary’s biggest year ever; here are some tips if you are thinking of joining in!
1. Be kind to yourself. Changing lifelong habits can be hard; it’s a big step to even consider making some changes. Don’t judge yourself if you fall off the wagon; just move on and try again the next day. Congratulate yourself for the progress that you do make! Your journey towards being more plant-based might take a month, or it might take longer. The 'end point’ at the end of January might be to become fully vegan, or it might be to eat a certain number of plant-based meals per week. Remember, life is an ongoing journey. Being kind to yourself is of crucial importance.
2. Embrace ‘mindful’ consuming. Use Veganuary as a means to begin to see the world in a new and more mindful way - take the time to stop and consider where different products come from, how they are made, what goes into them, their environmental impact, their impacts on animals and on people. When you start reading ingredients lists, for example, it can be very surprising just how many products contain animal-derived ingredients of one form or another. But, equally, there are large and ever-growing numbers of entirely plant-based alternatives and exploring these can be a hugely rewarding and positive experience - exploring new tastes and flavours, and exploring a new awareness of what we consume.
3. Go at a pace that feels right for you. Some people try going vegan overnight; for others, a more gradual transition feels appropriate. Some people will want to concentrate on a ‘whole foods plant-based diet’ while others will want to explore all of the plant-based alternatives to processed meat products (burgers, sausages, pizzas, ready meals, and so on). Everyone is different. Go at a pace, and follow the path, that feels right for you.
4. Be positive. As you go through the month, think to yourself ‘what am I gaining?’, ‘what am I learning?’, and not ‘what am I missing out on?’. As indicated above, many people who become vegan find it to be a very positive and life-affirming experience. After all, from an ethical point of view, it is founded in a notion of being more compassionate towards all living creatures. Enjoy the experience - and if you find that you miss certain foods, look for alternatives and over time those feelings will cease. It’s perhaps a bit like when people try to reduce the amount of salt they cook with: at first this is difficult and meals taste strange, but over time cooking with low or no salt becomes the new normal.
5. Sign up to the official Veganuary challenge. Sign up here to ensure that you benefit from all of the free resources and information that Veganuary makes available, including hundreds of recipes as well as nutrition tips, shopping guides, and so on.
Finally, why not begin by browsing for some “Veganuary Essentials” (and treats - “Vego” chocolate bars are amazing!) at The Vegan Kind supermarket:
Good luck and enjoy the journey; by being open-minded and trying Veganuary, you’re doing an amazing thing for the planet, for people, for animals, and for yourself!!
A recent study led by the Technical University of Munich has found that organic meat production is just as bad for the climate as other farming methods and "the lowest impact meat was still far more damaging than the worst plant foods”. The message is clear: to minimise our impact on the environment, we should switch to a plant-based diet.
The message echos that of some other significant studies in recent times.
As reported here, a study in 2019 led by researchers at Oxford University concluded that "fruit, vegetables, beans and wholegrains were best for both avoiding disease and protecting the climate and water resources. Conversely, eating more red and processed meat causes the most ill health and pollution.”
In 2018, a huge Oxford-led study concluded that "avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth”. The study, published in the journal “Science”, was the largest analysis to date of the environmental impact of the livestock and dairy industries. Joseph Poore, who led the research, stated that “a vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use. It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car.”
As noted here, the best way to reduce the carbon footprint of what you eat is to focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local. The advice to “eat local” is misguided in the sense that it usually disregards the environmental impact of food production. “Eating locally would only have a significant impact if transport was responsible for a large share of food’s final carbon footprint. For most foods, this is not the case... Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10% and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%.”
Indeed, it's been clear for some time that "the ongoing global appetite for meat is having a devastating impact on the environment driven by the production of crop-based feed for animals". As stated in that article, "the vast scale of growing crops such as soy to rear chickens, pigs and other animals puts an enormous strain on natural resources leading to the wide-scale loss of land and species, according to the study from the conservation charity WWF.”
In respect of soy, "around 70 percent of the world’s soy is fed directly to livestock... the logical way to help stop soy-related deforestation is to stop eating meat." As explained in that article: "By choosing to eat more plant-based foods, you can drastically cut your carbon footprint, save precious water supplies and help ensure that vital crop resources are fed to people, rather than livestock. With the wealth of available plant-based options available, it has never been easier to eat with the planet in mind.”
A report by Dr. Richard Carmichael from Imperial College London, titled "Behaviour change, public engagement and Net Zero” (2019), reached some important conclusions:
"While there are large variations in the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the same foodstuff depending on where and how it is produced, it is abundantly clear that the foods producing by far the most emissions come from livestock farming: meat, especially beef and lamb from ruminants, and dairy produce. The livestock industry by itself accounts for an estimated 14.5% of all human-induced greenhouse gas emissions (Gerber et al., 2013). In contrast, plant-based foods are consistently much lower impact than even the most sustainable meat and dairy products. The IPCC Special Report on 1.5ºC acknowledges, with ‘high confidence’, that emissions could be reduced through shifting to less resource-intensive diets by reducing demand for meat and dairy, particularly where consumption is higher than suggested by human health guidelines, a conclusion increasingly shared (Chatham House, 2015a; Poore and Nemecek, 2018; Ranganathan et al., 2016; Willett et al., 2019). In countries with high per-capita meat consumption, a shift to plant-based diets would deliver up to around a 73% reduction in diet-related emissions compared to current levels and would require 70-80% less farmland (Aleksandrowicz, Green, Joy, Smith and Haines, 2016; Poore and Nemecek, 2018). Other research finds that halving the consumption of meat, dairy products and eggs in the European Union would achieve a 25–40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture (Westhoek et al., 2014).
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