Reasons to take part in Veganuary

Veganuary.com inspired and supported over 620,000 people to try a vegan diet – which means no meat, fish, dairy or eggs - during its 2022 campaign – with participants from over 220 countries and territories taking part. This year thousands will again join the plant based revolution, if only for one month, and reap the reportedly manifolld health benefits.

According to a 2019 article in The Economist, 25% of 25- to 34-year-old Americans say they are vegans or vegetarians. And interest in veganism hit an all-time high in 2020, according to a report by the food-focused website Chef's Pencil.

Veganuary is a non-profit organisation that encourages people worldwide to try a vegan diet for January and beyond. During the 2022 campaign, more than 1,540 new vegan products and menu options were launched in key campaign countries.

Throughout the year, Veganuary encourages and supports people and businesses alike to move to a plant-based diet as a way of protecting the environment, preventing animal suffering, and improving the health of millions of people.

Over the next five years, the organisation aims to make powerful strides toward a world where being vegan is the norm rather than the exception.

Instead of meaty burgers, sausage and steaks, vegans eat plant-based versions. Instead of dairy cheese on a pizza or cows’ milk in coffee, vegans choose plant-based versions.

For almost every animal-derived ingredient and product, there is now a vegan alternative, and this means that a vegan meal may look and taste exactly like a non-vegan meal; it just doesn’t come with the animal suffering or the same environmental impact.

Not all vegan food is automatically healthy. You could eat a dozen delicious flavours of vegan ice cream for breakfast, a stack of pancakes doused in syrup for lunch, and a dinner of cakes, cookies, meringues and cheesecakes. It’s great that we can make or buy all these wonderful vegan treats but no one would think for a moment that they are healthy.

A healthy diet must include putting plants at the centre of our meals, though this does not mean we have to sacrifice pleasure or flavour. And if we choose wholefoods, legumes, nuts, fruits, spices, herbs and some of the 20,000 edible plants that exist in the world, we can experience an incredible improvement in our health while enjoying some wonderful flavours.

What are the health benefits of going vegan?

Research has shown that a vegan diet can help do the following: promote weight loss; reduce your risk of heart disease by lowering cholesterol levels; lower your chances of getting certain types of cancer, such as colon cancer; lower your blood pressure; and manage diabetes by lowering A1C levels (the metric that eflects your average blood sugar level).

It can also allegedly give you a better complexion as one of the worst culprits for breakouts is dairy – multiple studies have shown that dairy consumption exacerbates acne in both men and women. Vegans eat plenty of the good stuff that’s needed for healthy skin, such as antioxidants and vitamins.

Studies have shown that a diet high in healthy vegan foods can also help reduce the symptoms of arthritis, since consuming animal-derived foods is linked to pain-causing inflammation. Eating probiotic plant-based foods such as fermented vegetables and non-dairy yogurts with live cultures can boost the good bacteria in the large intestine, also helping to boost nutrient absorption and reduce inflammation.

Fully plant-based eaters score higher on the Healthy Eating Index not because they forgo meat, but rather because they eat more minimally-processed whole plant foods such as vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, and seeds.

Eating processed meat, according to some research studies, increases our chances of developing cancer, and further suggests that consuming animals’ flesh, milk, and eggs could be as detrimental to our health as smoking.

Since it takes work—label reading, food prep, menu scrutiny—to follow this eating style, they may also be more conscious of their food intake, which leads to healthier choices.

Popular vegan recipes

There are vegan options for virtually every foodstuff, although they can be hard to source here in Northern Ireland where veganism is still very much a minority diet.

But popular vegan recipes include tofu, mac and cheese, sugar snap peas and noodles, a kale, black bean and avocado burrito bowl, butternut squash linguine with fried sage,

veggie burgers, vegetable paella and lentil casseroles.

If you would like to join the plant revolution visit veganuary.com.