A few weeks ago, I sat next to a former England footballer at lunch. She had suffered a serious ankle injury in her early thirties. After researching how to recover, she decided to turn vegan. Medical staff were sceptical until her statistics proved better than ever. Today, her only regret is not changing diet sooner.
Such stories have become rarer. Veganism was once the biggest food trend. Now the zeitgeist is elsewhere. Google searches for the word “vegan” rose steadily after 2010, peaked in early 2020 and have dropped since. Sales of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, which make arguably the best vegan burgers, are falling too.
Eleven Madison Park, the high-end New York restaurant which went plant-based after Covid-19, is reintroducing meat to its menu. One high-profile vegan, crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, is in jail. Another, New York mayor Eric Adams, turned out to like eating at fish restaurants.