Thanks to the positive effects of globalisation (it does indeed have some negatives), along with the relatively opened up nature of the manner through which information is available, certain sub-cultures emerge as complete lifestyles, such as veganism. There has definitely been a rise in veganism, or has there really?

Either way, explore what appears to be a spike in veganism, what the reasons behind that might be and the effects thereof.

More people going vegan or more vegans vocalising their lifestyle choice?

I suppose at this point there’s no real need to explain what veganism is, but in brief, it’s simply a lifestyle adopted by people who are against the consumption of animal products. Vegans are perhaps a much stricter iteration of vegetarians, who simply don’t eat meat, whereas the vegans shun pretty much all animal food products, such as eggs. You might find yourself wondering about things like what on earth vegan fries are then, since fries are indeed fried potatoes…

Vegan fries epitomise the lifestyle choice element of veganism, which doesn’t always necessarily come from a health motivation. Sometimes it’s just something of a stand against animal cruelty, especially since some kind of animal cruelty is often associated with the rearing and slaughtering of the animals out of which “non-vegan” foods and food products are produced.

So something like vegan fries would simply mean that the oil used to fry the potatoes isn’t an animal product based one, like fish oil, for instance.

Right, but now to address the question of the rise in veganism, while there are indeed many more people who are informed and as a result choose to adopt veganism, this doesn’t necessarily mean that there are suddenly more people going vegan. A huge part of it is simply that as the world’s population increases, so does the percentage of vegans, so it’s proportionate.

Also, with the opening up of platforms such as YouTube to pretty much anyone who has internet, naturally more and more vegans are going to also make use of such channels, which is why it may seem like there are suddenly more vegans in the world. If you watch one YouTube video produced by someone who primarily runs a veganism channel for instance, regardless of the fact that that specific video may not have much to do with veganism, all of a sudden the interest-matching algorithm will suggest similar content, so it may very well seem like there are suddenly more vegans emerging out of the woodwork.

What’s your take?

Are you a vegan and what were your reasons for deciding to go vegan? Are you perhaps on the extreme opposite end of this spectrum and you’re one of those people who would even go out and hunt their own meat if they had to? Do you enjoy eating vegetarian and vegan takeout or cooking vegan meals at home?

Either way, we encourage mutual respect between two groups which should not even be separated along the stupid lines of lifestyle preferences. It gets crazy sometimes, with some vegans at odds with each other across their veganism YouTube channels…