VEGANUARY: A SUGGESTION FOR JANUARY, NEW BEGINNING MONTH
Veganuary is a non-profit
organization that was launched in the United Kingdom in January 2014. It is a
global movement that encourages people to try out a plant-based diet for the
first month and throughout the year. [1] Nowadays, it becomes a phrasal verb
like; googling.
The word vegan was first introduced
by Donald Watson, co-founder of The Vegan Society. The Vegan Society was
founded in 1944 by animal activists who wanted to do more to treat animals
ethically by removing animal products from their diets and lifestyles (Vegan
Society, n.d.).
Veganism is a type of diet that does
not include meat an all other animal products. The vegan diet is trendy
nowadays. The increase in interest in the vegan diet is also evident from the
number of newly published books. As mentioned in (Kerschke-Risch, 2015), it was
only 12 books in 2011 and increased to 50 in 2013 and 77 in the third quarter
of 2014. In addition, only the opening of grocery stores in recent years is an
indicator of the rise of the vegan trend. In addition, according to the survey
conducted by Germany [2], almost 90% of respondents thought that being vegan
was easier than a few years ago. All of the above mentioned information is the
most straightforward indication that a vegan diet will increase.
The campaign aims to provide people
with a vegan diet all month long, in the hope of showing participants that the
diet can be healthy, enjoyable and sustainable in the long run. While the
campaign focuses on diet, it aims to not only see animals as food in order to
be vegan, but also to think about the ethical, environmental, economical,
sustainable, health and dietary aspects of this issue.
Interestingly, most of those who
made changes in January continued these changes during the first week of
February, and 81% of respondents said they plan to continue these changes in
the future.
The Veganuary has seen significant
growth in the eight years it has been active, from just 3,000 members in 2014
to over 400,000 members in 2020. [3][4]
Based on the results, Faunalytics
presented some preliminary results. About 20% of respondents were already vegan
before the Veganuary, but in open-ended comments, researchers found that
exercise is still valuable as a support mechanism, especially for people who
have recently become vegan. More than a third of respondents say they "ate
a completely vegan diet for at least a week following the Veganuary".
Breaking this down, they state that "more than half of these people are
already vegetarians, but about a quarter are pessary and 13% omnivores."
This is a "strong" conversion rate, even for the first week following
the Veganuary. [5]
For the Vegan January 2020 report;
More than half of the non-vegan participants maintained a fully vegan diet for
the whole month (59%), and a staggering 72% plan to stay vegan after the
Veganuary. When asked why they plan to stay vegan, the main reasons given are;
learned more about veganism, easier than expected, felt healthy, discovered
great delicious food, and Veganuary email support. [6]
It can be thought that the majority
may find it difficult to differentiate and change the basic elements of their
diet in this way for a long time. People can modify his / her diet based on
such approaches because the main thing is to care about a healthy diet.
.
CONTENT: Nursena ZEYBEKOĞLU
REFERENCES:
[3] Faunalytics (2014, August 22).
Veganuary 2014 report. Faunalytics. Retrieved from
https://faunalytics.org/veganuary-2014-report/
[4] Veganuary 2020 Results. (2020,
February 3) Retrieved from: https://veganuary.com/over-400000-people-took-part-in-veganuary-2020/
.
[5] Glover, M., Land & Grady, C.
(2016). Veganuary 2016 Results. (2016, March 24) Retrieved from:
http://www.veganuary.com/veganuary-2016-the-results/