Veganism: Coming to Shelves Near You

Izzy LoNigro

Shamile Aldosarry knows how to shop vegan. She’s been doing it for years.

She stops by the fresh bakery section, for a vegan pie. Then she heads to the dairy section to find vegan yogurt, vegan cheese, and a JUST egg carton. Next she stops by the meatless meat section for some veggie burgers and finishes by grabbing her favorite dairy-free chocolate snacks.

Four years ago, Aldosarry’s shopping list could only be crossed off at Whole Foods. Now she fills her grocery cart at Costco.

Veganism is no longer a niche movement dominated by select and pricey food retailers. In March of 2020 VegNews reported that the number of vegans in America is close to 9.6 million.

During the Covid-19 lockdowns, people had time to examine their diets, practice cooking new foods, and educate themselves about the health and environmental benefits of veganism. Now corporations are responding. Vegan products are being produced and sold everywhere, and for a much lower cost than before.

Aldosarry has seen this shift. When she switched to a vegan diet, she lived on the campus of Northeastern University, a comparatively upscale neighborhood of Boston. There was a Trader Joe’s and a Whole Foods nearby, making it easy to find vegan products. She routinely made the walk down Boylston Street to the tiny Trader Joe’s across from the Prudential Center. She would try a new frozen vegan meal or dessert after each Sunday grocery run. During her first year at college she mastered her vegan grocery list and was able to find everything she needed just a short walk away.

When Aldosarry moved in 2017 to Mission Hill, she was met with a much bigger challenge. The only grocery store within walking distance was a Stop & Shop, which had few vegan options. Once again Aldosarry was hunting down food aisles for products knowing that she would have to go without some of her favorites.

Since then, Aldosarry has seen a big change. Her local Stop & Shop started offering more vegan items, and the cost fell. It introduced dairy-free cream cheese, dairy-free creamer, dairy-free sliced cheese, and most important — dairy-free ice cream. She is able to shop at the most convenient grocer without having to give up anything on her list.

Now, since getting a car, she is able to venture out to Costco where she has found she can buy these products wholesale.

“The fact that there are Costco brand vegan products is amazing to me,” says Aldosarry. It’s made the cost of veganism so much less.”

This isn’t just happening in grocery stores. Starbucks last year added vegan egg bites to its menu and partnered with Beyond Meat to incorporate a meatless burger. In February, many more companies partnered with Beyond Meat. McDonald’s added a McPlant Patty, and Yum!, the parent company of KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, is working with Beyond Meat to expand its plant-based menu offerings.

This, in turn, is likely to spread. “I think a lot of people go vegan because they know someone else who already is,” says Aldosarry. “And now people have even more reasons to go vegan since there are options everywhere.”

Vegans even have choices at baseball games now. Oatly, a company that uses oat milk in its products, teamed up with Wrigley Stadium in Chicago and Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, to serve vanilla and chocolate vegan ice cream this summer. The partnership could be the gateway to other stadiums across the United States. This is huge for vegan baseball fans that can’t enjoy a hot dog or dairy ice cream in the stands.

Vegans have also gained a large platform on social media sites. The Instagram page veganbowls, which shares a handful of recipes for grainbowls, smoothies and pasta dishes collected from other vegan content creators, has 3.1 million followers. Other vegan influencers have taken to the newest and most influential social media app, TikTok.

TikTok works differently than other sites. Instead of content from friends, the app cultivates content that it thinks a user will enjoy. This allows for people to see things they might not have sought out on their own, such as nutritionists sharing the benefits of a plant-based diet, or videos of people making vegan snacks in their college dorms.

One of the most successful vegan TikTokers, Tabitha Brown, has amassed 3.5 million followers with her soothing voice-overs as she cooks vegan meals.

Use of social media grew during the isolation of the pandemic. The number of TikTok users alone grew more than 75 percent last year, according to Forbes. People turned to Facebook groups and Instagram pages as well for inspiration while taking college courses from childhood bedrooms and working corporate jobs from cramped apartments.

This was the case for 20-year-old Samantha Yost. Like many people, Yost spent the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown spending hours scrolling through TikTok. She started to come across a lot of content about how a plant-based diet can be good for the body and environment. So she decided to try it.

“It was gradual for me. I started incorporating new things into my diet, like chickpeas and lentils, before completely removing other things, says Yost. “And then one day I said, ‘Okay I’m going full in.’ ”

Yost has been vegan for almost a year now. Once she started, she realized how many options were available to her. It was the health benefits that pushed her to try veganism, and she says she can feel the difference — especially after she got Covid-19. Yost says a vegan diet helped her build back her immune system, and she feels better generally than she did before.

A vegan diet may prevent chronic diseases and result in better health, says the American Dietetic Association. In a study by the association, people who do not eat meat had lower instances of cancer, lower cholesterol, and lower levels of hypertension.

“There’s a vast amount of nutritional research promoting vegan diets that has become more apparent recently,” says vegan activist and president of the Boston Vegetarian Society Evelyn Kimber.

Kimber and the Boston Vegetarian Society host an annual gathering of food vendors and advocates called VegFest to promote a vegan or vegetarian diet. The society was established in 1987 and has seen a growth in membership recently.

“Once you educate yourself, it’s hard to see the point in maintaining a diet that is harmful to yourself, unnecessarily cruel to animals, and destructive of the earth,” says Kimber.

Environmentalism is also driving veganism. Animal agriculture is one of the greatest contributors to environmental degradation such as deforestation, desertification, and resource deprivation. Many vegans choose this diet as a way of lowering their carbon footprint and spending their money on products that don’t use as many natural resources to produce.

Corporations are capitalizing on these movements. Beyond Meat and Oatly partnerships are just the beginning. Vegan and vegetarian restaurants are popping up around cities including Boston, Chicago, and Miami. Vegan and vegetarian food is widely available in Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles, and the market is growing.

“Young people tend to be more open to different diets,” says Aldosarry. “But it’s cool to see it happening in older generations like my parents and coworkers. At home now we do meat-free days and only drink plant-based milk.”

Veganism is trending. And it’s going to be everywhere soon.