In the last few days I have been seeing headlines about research that highlights how participation in Veganuary can result in longer term changes to meat eating (see for example this article in The Conversation by Lawrence, Becker and Hearn).

I’ve never taken part in Veganuary – I have a bit of an odd diet anyway – the best description of my ethical stance is “pescetarian”.  I haven’t eaten meat since I was about 16.  But later in my adulthood I found out I have an intolerance to dairy (and wheat) so I don’t have any milk, butter or cheese type things.  However, I do eat fish, shellfish, eggs and products like honey.  As about 3 or 4 of my main meals each week are vegan, I never really considered Veganuary as a ‘thing’ to try.

But last year in January 2024, I read an article in The Conversation by Selwyn. Like this year’s research publication, it was deliberately published to coincide with Veganuary.  The article outlined how meat and dairy giants were exploiting the interest in veganism.  Reading this article reinforced my annoyance with the rise in vegan ultra-processed foods which seem to me to miss the point of a healthy vegan diet.  But, as I read the article, I noticed that one of the vegan brands being discussed was Alpro.  I’d been drinking their organic soya milk for many many years because it was one of the few plant milk products that was simply hulled soya beans plus water with no additives.  However, I had never noticed the small print on the tetrapaks – that Alpro was a brand of Danone – the dairy giant.

I then did some further reading around commercial soya milk and learned that the ‘side product’ (essentially the soya pulp that remains after the milk is made, referred to as okara by the Japanese) is used as a cattle feed.  I started to wonder whether the milk marketed to unsuspecting vegans is actually the side product to the production of animal feed.  It felt all wrong.

This was the final straw.  As a household that purchased 5 or so litres of plant based milk each week, we had already been moaning how much the price had increased. We were paying for the transportation of a lot of water which isn’t all that good for the environment. We’d also realised that even though we dutifully recycled them, we got through a lot of tetrapaks.

So Selwyn’s article was that final trigger.  We purchased a plant based milk making machine and started making our own ‘milk’. We make and use both soya milk and oat milk.  The okara gets used in ‘creamy’ soups.  The oat-kara gets eaten for breakfast.  Yes, it is an investment of time every couple of days but it has been relatively easy to build the habit.  We reduced our overall cost, reduced our environmental impact, increased the health-iness of our soups and breakfasts, and cut ties with Alpro.

So the reason I tell this story is that this sort of impact on ‘non-participants’ of Veganuary doesn’t really get researched.  The fact that more research is published, that more articles are around can also have direct impacts on those that don’t go full on – even those who think they are doing quite a lot already.

So perhaps, to use the phrase coined by the late Michael Mosely, ‘just one thing’ could be of interest too – as both a campaign idea and a research focus.

(But actually, in January 2024 I ended up doing three ‘just one things’ to ‘improve’ my diet.  They weren’t all Veganuary inspired so I will blog about the other two separately.)