Veganuary? NO

January wasn’t just dry this year. Here in Switzerland, it was above all Veganuary, trying to convince people to incorporate vegan food in their diet.

Which, don’t get me wrong, in essence is a nobel thing, but the way it was done made me cringe. What I saw was the new gold mine for the processed food industry.

Let me explain what I mean. The campaign was all about introducing non vegans and mainly non-vegetarians to processed food like “non-chicken-chicken”.

There was no such thing as promoting a real fresh food based vegan diet. Not even for just the month. It was all about loads and loads of processed food products like vegan nuggets ‘chicken style”, or plant based “fillet strips” or vegan schnitzels “Wiener Art”.

Of course there are some brands that stick to proper naming not mentioning the meat version it’s kind of based on. But bottom line it’s a lot of processed foods that are promoted with a lot of salt and sugar.

And last but not least I was shocked about how few products besides drinks and vegetables are available certified as organic. So although you’d switch to a 100% plant based diet becoming vegan, you’ll be back to zero when it comes to organic production methods.

Well I guess you get my point, I am not a fan. 
I just don’t like extremes and certainly not this way of introducing a new lifestyle or diet to consumers new to the principles of that lifestyle.

In my personal opinion a lifestyle far away from any extremes is the best lifestyle. No single food source excluded and no single food source consumed in too large portions especially not the animal food sources.

So if you are interested in improving the variety in your diet, and you’re not used to eating vegetarian or vegan yet, I suggest you do it sustainably in just 5 little steps:
🌱 start looking at your daily portions first 
🌱 fill half your plate with fresh vegetables 
🌱 then fill one quarter with potatoes, rice, pasta, quinoa, beans etc 
🌱 finally fill the last quarter with protein like meat, fish, eggs, cheese or tofu. 
🌱 add vegetarian or vegan meals 2–3 times a week.

That will probably cut your animal food sources in half or less 😉
Just to give you an idea what the impact could be.

On average in Europe a person eats about a kilo of meat and meat products per week. In the USA this is even almost 2 kilos per week per person.

I eat in total, so including cold cuts etc., about 450 grams of meat every week and my husband roughly 600. So we eat around 1 kilo per week with the two of us. And always organic, preferably locally purchased meat of course. That is considerably less than the averages around us, so just imagine what impact you can make by just taking these 5 small steps.

Together we can contribute a whole lot to a better world and improve our personal health, while still staying away from processed food whether that processed food is vegan or not.