In the years since I last wrote at length about the vegan lifestyle, it has become flavour of the month(s), and the range of vegan products in supermarkets and vegan cookbooks in bookstores has exploded. Almost overnight, the word “vegan” replaced “sugar-free”, “lite”, “low fat” and “low carb” as the food marketers’ favourite phrase. 

VEGAN WAXING

As its popularity sky-rocketed, the word “vegan” also became shorthand for the worldwide boom in plant-based, flexitarian and reductarian eating – and, in the process, it lost some of its ethical, political and ecological value for describing everyday, cruelty-free eating. 

Some sagely – or archly – pointed out that you couldn’t be vegan just for one day, or even a weekend. The rest of us seemed to disagree as we picked up vegan kombucha, vegan carrot hummus (though, seriously, what animal products were you previously putting in there along with the chickpeas, tahini and lemon juice?) and searched for vegan cheese that didn’t taste like cardboard (like the truth, it is out there). We’ve had vegan wine, vegan fashion week and 2019 was the year that The Economist declared the “year of the vegan”.

While there’s been a huge improvement in both the range and quality of both vegan standalone products and vegan dairy and meat substitutes – helped in large part by manufacturers no longer trying to make everything out of coconut fat – it seems as if Australia’s hunger for all things vegan is now softening slightly. Instead, vegetarianism is on the rise, which is good news for those of us who struggle to live without a cheese toastie, and who see life without eggs as a life without sunshine.

VEGAN WANING

Australia once led the way with vegan searches on Google but in the past year, we’ve been overtaken by the UK, and now Adelaide is the only Australian city that makes it into the top-five places searching for “vegan”, beaten only by London and LA. Adelaide’s long-term organic credentials have helped fuel this interest, and made it Australia’s most vegan city. (For the record, Melbourne is sixth, and Brisbane and Perth are ninth and 10th respectively; Sydney, meanwhile, is clearly down at the beach enjoying the good weather.) 

The picture is even bleaker if we look at searches for the fancier term “veganism”, with Australia now in third place overall, and only Melbourne (seventh) and Sydney (ninth) making the top of the charts.

THE VEGETARIAN ECLIPSE

The same can be found at delicious.com.au, where vegetarianism is eclipsing veganism once again. “Vegetarian” is our second most searched term and up a massive 32 per cent from 2019 (“vegan” is 24th, and only up a paltry 5 per cent). Most telling is that “vegetarian” has risen from being the sixth most searched term in 2017. Maybe 2021 is the “year of the vegetarian”…

At least things aren’t as bad as they are for keto; searches for the low-carb, high-fat diet have dropped by 14 per cent and it  has dropped from its lofty position as the number-one searched term in 2019 to third. 

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

While accurate numbers for vegans and vegetarians are tricky to come by, we do know from a survey in the US magazine Vegetarian Times that one million people in the US now identify as vegan and 9.7 million as vegetarian. Meanwhile, vegan numbers in the UK – home of food scares such as mad cow disease and the horsemeat scandal – have quadrupled over the past few years, lifting to 1 per cent of the population. An ABC poll places the percentage of vegans in Australia at about this, too – although only 3 per cent of those polled identified as vegetarian, which rings some alarm bells.

A NUMBERS GAME

The trouble is that while the number of people identifying as vegan may not have soared in the face of all this increased interest, I have a sneaking suspicion that the total amount of vegan and vegetarian meals eaten may tell a very different story. It seems to me that vegan food has become part of the tapestry of what we eat in Australia – whether we’re vegan or not. 

The connection in the minds of some that “vegan food” is synonymous with “healthy food” helps drive this. However, Aussies are driven even more by “healthy and fast”, with a staggering 11.7 million views of our gallery of “60 healthy dinners you can cook in 30 minutes”. This was almost seven times more views than that of the top-rating vegetarian recipes, and the top vegan recipes fell way below that. Aussies want to have their (sugar-free, flourless) cake and eat it now.

THE CHANGING FOODSCAPE 

While the fashionability of veganism may wax and wane, I know it’s impacted how  I eat in many little ways. I now make my instant mayo with chickpea juice rather than eggs, and when I’ve had too much butter, I occasionally sub in a Tasmanian oat spread (far better than margarine).

Perhaps the biggest change I’ve observed has been the way so many Australians have embraced the pleasure of vegetables. It’s as if we’ve moved from being a “meat and three veg” nation to one that wants three veg and just a little meat a few times a week.