Vegantech and morals

Are we being manipulated into accepting a future of vegan junk food?

Two of every three American men are considered to be overweight or obese, but the rates for women are far higher. The United States contains one of the highest percentages of obese people in the world.
63% of American teenage girls become overweight by age 11.

More than 60 per cent of the American diet consists of highly processed foods — foods that have been taken apart and put back together again with various combinations of sugar, salt, oil and additives. Kids are fed junk food at school with sugary sodas.

It does not have to be this way.

I was born and raised in Portugal where food is one of the essential priorities in life. Portugal is considered a poor but developed country. I was never given any processed food and ate my first burger when the first American-style cinemas opened in the city. Cinemas are still today the primary way American fast food companies introduce junk food to kids in Portugal.

My family was not a middle-high class or even middle-class; I was raised by a single mother earning near the minimum wage.
When working shifts, she would leave different ingredients for me and explain to me how to cook them or warm them up. I remember doing it from a very young age without a microwave. At school, we had only one option, vegetable soup, a freshly cooked main-dish with a small piece of protein that was regularly fish. To drink we were given tap water and a portion of seasonal fruit for dessert. I don’t remember one time that we were given a burger, a pizza or nuggets. The closest thing from nuggets that I remember were fish fingers.
Nowadays the situation is different, as the TV and the Internet are over saturated with ads of American fast food chains and people, including many kids, who started following unhealthy food habits are continuously gaining weight and getting so-called lifestyle diseases.
Portuguese society is aware of this problem, and recently the government has approved a law to serve only organic, local food in school canteens. In Portugal, by law, every school, hospital and prison must offer a vegan option, and it has been like that for the last two years.
But even in a small country like Portugal, it is not easy to hold the ‘Americanisation’ of the food culture.
When the Ministry of Health launched a national media campaign and tax law against the popularisation of junk food and sweetened beverages, big international food companies threatened the government, forcing them to remove the ads from the TV and to soften the tax policy.

Veganism for a better and kinder world.

Ask any vegan about the advantages of veganism, and they will tell you: animals welfare, better health and a cleaner environment.
These are the three strong arguments to go Vegan. Today you don’t have to compromise on taste to be able to produce and consume food that is local, sustainable, healthy and made from plants without any harm and exploitation.

A blogger who is a part of an influential plant-based lobby group, wrote last week that vegans should ignore their environmental values and other morals and focus on reducing the number of animals killed at any cost.

Are vegans empty pawns that should ignore their values?

During the last two years, veganism has exploded in some countries; in some age groups over a third of the population is vegan, this is true for 18 years old in the UK, or millennial women in Sweden.

The diffusion of innovations theory argues that we need at least 13.5% of society to adopt an idea before it explodes to become mainstream. If you are a part of the vegan movement, you know that in some countries veganism is very close to 13.5%. If you consider the fact that in the youngest generations that number is already higher, mass adoption of the vegan lifestyle for that specific generation has already begun.

In the last year, all the attention of veganism growth has been redirected to the so-called flexitarians, those who occasionally avoid meat. Some people claim that flexitarians will decide about the future of the world and save the animals and that vegans are delaying the adoption of veganism because they are associated with bad connotations. Non-Profits are being financed to support this idea. Vegans are called extremists by these organisations. That is a stigma the vegans fight so hard to eliminate. That is the worst possible way you can call someone who has been fighting for the right values like animal welfare and a better world for all of us.

In a recent article, covering the dispute between the company and PETA, Impossible Foods calls vegans " extremists" and argues that vegans are trying to sabotage Silicon Valley mission of saving the world.
Does it ring a bell for those who know Silicon Valley companies tactics?
Facebook insists that those who argue against its involvement in giving voice to hate and right-wing radicals are against free speech.
Uber claims that those who say Uber cars increase traffic and pollution in the cities are against free-market. Google argues that those who speak against Orwellian style data collection are against progress.

Silicon Valley seems amazing for everyone that loves tech, business, innovation and entrepreneurship as I do. But when you look closely at many companies, you see that dishonesty is constant there.

Dan Earlier, a professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics, believes these are the factors that increase the likelihood of dishonesty:

• The ability to rationalise it
• A conflict of interest
• A high personal level of creativity and imagination
• The precedent of one dishonest act of one’s own
• Watching others behave dishonestly
• A culture that provides examples of dishonesty
• That others benefit from our dishonesty
  Silicon Valley has seen it all.

The plant-based American startups had been funded by some of the richest men in the world even before they had a product. They spend millions in PR to build the profile of the company, their founders and investors before they sold any product. They call themselves the ‘disruptors’. They are telling us that they will save the world, that their mission is to save millions of animals and that they will do it at any cost.

Testing a burger in 180 rats is not about the 180 rats; it is about the thousands of rats, chimpanzees, dogs, rabbits that suffer and die in labs every day.

I do not doubt that products like Impossible will replace burgers made from cows and are an excellent product for fast food chains, even if these chains cause tremendous human and animal suffering when lobbying for the right to promote junk food to kids. Mass produced meat alternatives have similar quantities of fat to meat processed products, mainly coconut fat that is unhealthy.
I believe that it will reduce meat consumption in the western world, but it will increase it in developing countries where people still consume very little meat and are increasing meat consumption thanks to importing American food culture. India is an example of a developing country with over 1 billion inhabitants, where they used to consume around 4 kg of meat per year just a few years ago, versus over 100kg per capita per year in the USA. Indians are considered vegetarian, but they are continually increasing their meat consumption because of cultural influences and millions of dollars spent in advertisement by fast food chains and processed food manufacturers, mainly targeted at kids

Impossible Foods made the right decision of calling their burger plant-based instead of vegan, and I believe that it is important to respect their choice. They should not feel threatened by vegans not consuming their products as they proudly claim their product is targeted at meat-eaters.

They should only worry if the world turns vegan and there will be no meat-eaters. 😄 😄
What will they do to protect their shareholders then? 😉

Short-term solutions vs long term solutions

Vegans want a world, where there is no hunting, no animals in the circus, no tests on animals, no poaching, we don’t want animals to be commodities. Vegans are turning the world into a better place.
Why are plant-based non-profits trying to make vegans feel ashamed of that? Why do they feel threatened by the opinion of vegans?

Vegan software as a solution

There are millions of vegans around the world, vegan political parties and vegan companies that offer fantastic products, services and experiences. Vegan business is a form of activism.
We are not going to change the world by consuming. We can change the world by educating, collaborating, participating and investing. We must unite, work together, support each other in business activities. We can create and fund multi-million companies if we join forces.
We need to be able to finance activism and animal rights lobbies from the profits of the vegan economy. We can do it by using technology.
Software connects people; It helps people to organise, raise funds, to shop, to share ideas and soon will solve very complex problems with AI.
Software can aid the growth of veganism more than food tech or non-profits. Software can be the drive for a change.