Tag Archives: plant-based

Vegan Olympian Kaylin Whitney

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Olympic gold medalist Kaylin Whitney has found that a plant-based diet enables her to win gold, again and again.  She switched to a plant-based diet during the pandemic, when the Tokyo Olympics were postponed and she had some time to try something new.  As she continued her training, she saw big benefits in how her body worked and felt.  She found a winning formula and it was reflected in her on-track performances.   

“Once I came into that 2021 season, feeling a lot healthier and a lot lighter, my performance in training was going amazing,” she recalls.   She ran a lifetime best of 50.29 seconds for fifth place at the 2021 US trials and that gave her a place in the 400m relays at her first Olympics.  She came away from the Tokyo Olympics with gold in the women’s 4x400m relay and bronze in the mixed 4x400m relay.  She added another gold to her collection as part of the victorious women’s 4x400m team at last year’s World Athletics Championship.  

Beyond the physical benefits she has felt from going plant-based, Whitney is also very candid about the mental benefits too. “I definitely suffer from anxiety and have for my whole life,” she admits. “What you eat gives you energy and that directly affects your mood. So, if you eat junk, you are going to feel like junk…It’s help me feel more stable, more in tune with myself. I never feel like I am lacking anything. I don’t crave the things that I used to crave before. For me, it’s a nice way to live my life.”  

“It was the best thing I ever did,” she proudly declares of her transition to plant-based foods.

LinkedIn café offers plant-based by default

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The headquarters building of LinkedIn, based in San Francisco, has converted their employee café to be plant-based by default.  The company was looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint, and the food they served in their cafeterias provided them with a big opportunity to make a difference. Working with an organization called “Greener by Default” alongside their catering partner, Sodexo-owned Good Eating Company, they were able to gradually move to a 65% plant-based menu and the replacement of cows’ milk with oat milk as the default.

Although they still serve meat dishes, these are limited in number, and they only serve the most carbon-intensive options such as beef or lamb, in one dish per week.  They have worked to create vegan versions of the most popular meat dishes in the café, so that diners will likely choose the most climate-friendly options.  As they made the transition to offering more plant-based options, they carried out regular surveys of the diners to see how they felt about the new choices that were being offered.  As the feedback received was positive, they were able to make more changes over a three-month trial period, and ended with having switched the ratio of foods from five meat meals to three plant-based meals to five plant-based meals and three meat-based at each meal. Other LinkedIn offices will now start working on the same menu transformation.

“When a corporate trendsetter like LinkedIn shows that people are happy to choose plant-based foods when they’re accessible and appealing, it’s a huge leap forward towards a more sustainable food culture,” said Katie Cantrell, CEO of Greener by Default.  Greener by Default works with a range of clients including healthcare facilities, universities, restaurants and more.  They include Harvard University, Stanford Medicine and a global soap manufacturer Dr Bronner, as happy clients alongside LinkedIn.  They present plant-based food as being more sustainable, cost-effective and inclusive. Clients note that by making plant-based meals the default, they also increase the healthfulness of their meals.  They seem to have hit on a winning formula to help businesses make a significant switch to their cafeteria options.

Plant-based proteins can help reach net zero emissions

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In a new report “The Breakthrough Effect” published for the World Economic Forum, three key “super-leverage” points have been identified as accelerating the move toward zero emissions across ten of the highest emitting sectors in the world economy. The public purchasing of plant-based proteins is identified as one of these super-leverage points, because of the impact of reducing meat production on the world’s rainforests in particular.

With time running out to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade, the report produced by an international team in conjunction with the University of Exeter, shows how parts of the global economy could move rapidly towards zero emissions by using government actions as super-leverage points.  The three key actions they identify are:

  • the mandate of the sale of electric vehicles,
  • requiring green ammonia to be used in the manufacture of fertilizers,
  • and, most significantly for us, the public purchasing of plant-proteins.

A tipping point is reached when a low-carbon solution is able to outcompete its higher-carbon alternative, creating a feedback loop that supports the low-carbon solution, thus influencing transitions in multiple sectors of the economy simultaneously. In the case of plant-based proteins, a tipping point may be triggered once plant-based alternatives cost the same amount as animal protein and can offer an equivalent attractiveness (taste, texture, nutrition).

If global government purchasing (in hospitals, schools, prisons and government departments for example) of plant-based alternatives to high-carbon emitters, such as meat and dairy, is required, this could rapidly increase demand and help producers reach the economies of scale needed to bring costs down.  It would also introduce millions of people to plant-based foods and help to shift social norms around meat consumption.

Researchers say that changing the market on this scale could free up 400-800 million hectares of land, equivalent to 7-15% of global agriculture land today, which would provide more land for carbon storage and biodiversity, while drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions and cutting incentives for deforestation.

The report concludes that the scale and pace of the economic transitions required to meet climate change goals are unprecedented in human history. While they cannot guarantee the outcome, the report writers urge policymakers to take decisions, such as switching public purchasing of food to plant-based proteins, and to act without delay!

Tofurky wins in court

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Good news – more lawsuits are rolling back unconstitutional labelling bans on using meat-based terms. Last month, a federal court ruled that an Arkansas law that had banned makers of meat alternatives such as Tofurky from using commonly understood words to describe their products was unconstitutional. The law prohibited the labeling of any food product as ‘meat’ unless that food product was derived from livestock, and it banned such terms as ‘veggie sausage’ and ‘veggie burger’ from food labeling in Arkansas.

The Arkansas law, U.S. District Court Judge Kristine Baker explained in her ruling, unconstitutionally barred Tofurky from “convey[ing] meaningful, helpful information to consumers about the products they are purchasing, and Tofurky’s repeated indications that the food products contained in these packages contain no animal-based meat dispel consumer confusion.”  In other words, no one is confused about whether Tofurky is turkey!

We’ve seen the same kind of thing in other states and other products but the meat, dairy and egg alternatives seem to be prevailing.  Last year, a lawsuit filed by Upton’s Naturals forced Mississippi’s agriculture department, which had issued similar rules, to backtrack and amend the rules.

Is the meat industry getting nervous? They should be. The sales of meat and dairy substitutes have been soaring, hence the clamor to adopt rules against using some words to describe meat alternatives. Supporters of such laws typically claim they want to help consumers avoid confusion. However, research and commonsense suggest consumers aren’t confused by terms such as “veggie burger” or the like. Worse, linguistic bans generally prohibit accurate and honest labeling even if—as the federal court in Arkansas found was the case with Tofurky’s labeling—”the product [in question] also states on the label that it’s 100% vegan, plant-based or meatless.”

Fast food restaurants of the future

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The growing interest in plant-based foods is giving rise to new startup restaurant chains on the horizon. For instance, John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market, plans to build a plant-based restaurant chain. Mackey is listed as a partner in Healthy America LLC, Bloomberg reports, which aims to launch vegetarian restaurants nationwide. Mackey’s past success scaling a business promoting healthy lifestyles is attracting plenty of investor attention as vegetarian and vegan diets grow in popularity. Several former Whole Foods executives are already joining Mackey in his new endeavor.

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Vegan athletes compete at Mr America contest

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Robert Cheeke – vegan bodybuilder

A team of 28 vegan athletes just participated in this year’s Mr America competition in Atlantic City, NJ, to show the world that vegans can be just as strong, muscular and fit at meat-eaters, if not better.

The Mr America contest includes 4 different challenges for both men and for women:

  • Bodybuilding, where the judges score each athlete based on muscular development, proportion, conditioning, posing and general appearance,
  • Olympic weightlifting, where the athlete lifts a 400-600 pound barbell from the floor to an overhead position,
  • Kettlebell sport, where athletes have to repeat a certain movement with a designated weight in a certain amount of time.
  • Crossfit, which is designed to test the athlete’s level of physical fitness, measuring strength, speed, agility and overall fitness.
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Quarterback Justin Fields chooses vegan for performance

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Justin Fields 2022

Justin Fields, the starting quarterback for the Chicago Bears, has discovered that following a plant-based diet makes him lighter and faster.  He first tried it in May 2020 while he was quarantined with his family, and they all decided to do a one-month plant-based challenge.  During that month, Fields noticed how his body felt better, and so at the end of the month, he continued with the diet, while the rest of his family went back to eating meat and dairy products.

Fields was drafted as the Bears’ number one choice in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft, after playing college football at Ohio State university. He continued with the Bears into the 2022 season.  Of his vegan diet, he says:

“It’s changed the way I feel and the way I perform dramatically. I just feel so much lighter and faster. Football as a sport is so hard on your body so I just want to do anything I can to have the longest career possible.”

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The latest product – 3-D printed plant-based salmon

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Printing 3D salmon

Revo Foods has created a 3D-printed salmon made from plants that is expected to reach the US market in 2023. The company, an Austrian plant-based food tech startup, currently sells packets of smoked “salmon” made from pea protein, algae extract and plant oils to mimic the taste and texture of real fish without the environmental impact. This new creation enables them to offer salmon fillets that can be cooked and served just like the fish version.

The new product is made with pea protein but is also also rich in omega-3 fatty acids, to ensure it’s nutritionally comparable with regular salmon, but without any cholesterol or toxins. The newly developed 3D printing production process will help improve the texture, so consumers are able to cook the whole-cut, plant-based salmon in various ways without compromising texture or flavor. The company’s website said this new process produces up to 86% less emissions than conventional salmon and uses 95% less freshwater. Of course, it also saves a lot of salmon lives.

Revo Foods Products

The company’s goal is to produce vegan seafood to lessen human impact on the oceans and avoid consumption of seafood containing toxins and heavy metals, such as mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). They are expanding their product line to include salmon and tuna spreads and salmon and tuna sashimi in the future.  We look forward to giving all their products a try.

Chris Paul, 12 year NBA all-star, credits plant-based diet

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Chris Paul 2022

NBA veteran, Chris Paul, made his 12th appearance on the NBA All-Star team in February, and credits his plant-based diet with helping him gain energy and reduce muscle aches both on and off the court.  The 37-year-old Phoenix Suns point guard decided to give a plant-based diet a try in 2019, and after experiencing many health and fitness benefits, he chose to stick with it.

“When I first went plant-based, it was for performance purposes but once I saw how my body changed and how I felt—it was for life,” Paul said in an interview with GQ. “Years ago, I probably wouldn’t have even gone outside to run around with my kids and all the other activities because my body would be aching. Now, with the constant lifting and making sure that my body is always ready, it’s been a good lifestyle change for me.” 

Before he went vegan, Chris enjoyed foods including fried chicken and burgers, but his commitment to a plant-based diet has led him to try a lot of new foods.  He finds vegan versions of his favorite foods, such as chocolate chip cookies and pancakes, and uses substitute products such as JUST Egg and Beyond Meat sausage as staples in his breakfasts.  For lunch, he typically eats a salad or a veggie bowl, along with a protein smoothie, while his dinners are prepared by a professional chef using plenty of beans, grains and vegetables.

Chris has managed to convince his father to give the diet a try too, and Charles Paul noticed health benefits such as lower cholesterol since he replaced chicken eggs with JUST Egg.  In October, Chris will lead the Phoenix Suns in his 18th season of professional basketball – a feat that only a few have achieved.  We think his diet has something to do with that!

Going to a meat-eaters barbecue?

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As July 4th approaches, many people think about hosting a barbecue at their home or in a local park.  This cultural phenomenon is well-established as a meat-eaters paradise, but meat-eating hosts often struggle with what to provide for the plant-based eaters they may wish to invite.  In fact, there are so many possible veg-friendly options these days that choosing what to buy can be daunting, as they just don’t know which to offer to their plant-based friends.  A veg option that one person loves may not work for others.

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