January was Veganuary!

What’s ‘Veganuary’? ” 

Since a few years January has become “Veganuary”, the month in which a British non-profit organization invites us to experiment with a vegan diet, cutting all animal components from our diet. The organization’s main goal is to promote a world without animal farms or slaughterhouses, where food production, in general,  does not affect the health of our planet and the future of the animals living in it. 

Some numbers…

The invitation is to try ‘vegan’ at least for thirty days; last year,  582,000 people in 209 countries around the world accepted the challenge.  The participation ranking reveals that Italy is seventh, with over 31 thousand registered users, while the United Kingdom is in first place.  In Italy, 82% of participants did not follow a vegan diet before starting but, at the end of the month, 30% of them continued and 38% reduced their consumption of meat and animal by-products by at least 75%.   

Many companies have also signed up to Veganuary, especially in the UK, such as Aldi, Tesco, Cameo and Nestlé, and some celebrities have become ambassadors for the initiative, like New York Mayor Eric Adams, actress Joanna Lumley and world-renowned chef Matthew Kenney.  

Italian’s ALDI supermarkets promoted vegan month in January, offering vegan products for a whole week, and restaurant chains such as Rossopomodoro, Capatoast, Hamerica’s and Flower Burger, each with different offers and proposals to invite consumers to choose their vegan options. 

Food delivery services such as Macai and SanaSana,  TheFork and  PerPranzo, online shops including  KoRo and Altromercato (the main Fairtrade reality in Italy), launched new products or vegan proposals for this initiative. A few days ago, The Guardian posted an article about the support for the Veganuary from Harrods, Superdrug and Volkswagen UK.  

Why “Veganuary”?

Leaving aside animal rights and moral reasons and focusing on the positive and negative effects of the Vegan Diet, a number of nutritionists wanted to find out more about what is involved in eating vegan. The principal benefit is that vegan helps us to learn to eat different foods, increasing the vegetable ingredients and reducing animal proteins which are still massively present in our diet. Over the years, ethnic cuisine proposals have also increased, often offering vegan or vegetarian menus, a way of discovering how to eat differently well. 

The vegan diet is considered crucial to reducing the emission of carbon gases, meat and animal products have a high environmental impact and, with the world population growing it will be important to change eating habits. 

How to approach a vegan diet

To deal with such a drastic change in our diet, it is necessary to supplement legumes with cereals, two vegetable foods that complement each other since the amino acids missing in cereals are contained in legumes and vice versa.   

It is also essential to diversify the quality of cereals, for example by choosing quinoa or amaranth more frequently for their quality-quantity of protein, and to mix in millet and bulgur.  

The global market has been able to adapt to this new trend, offering more and more plant-based products, from pasta made with lentils or peas, creamy chickpea soups, to tasty vegetable cheeses and burgers, completely meat-free but very tasty and with a high protein content.   di gusto e proteine.

Planted Based by choice

Naturis believes this is a way to improve the world and with us, more and more companies have started to experiment and offer new products.  

We work to guarantee healthy, balanced and fully customizable products, to get closer and closer to the new concept of food in continuous evolution.