The Best Way to Sell Vegan Food to People: Don’t Call it Vegan

I was perusing the vegan news this morning and came across this article from The New York Times from last month: How New York’s Public Hospitals Cut Carbon Emissions: More Vegetables.

TLDR: NYC Health + Hospitals has made plant-based food the default for patient meals. Meat or dairy is by special request only. Patient satisfaction with meals is being reporting above 90%. What’s more, the hospital system says the shift to a plant-based meal structure has helped them cut carbon emissions by 36%.

::MIND BLOWN EMOJI::

The part of this article that made me literally laugh out loud:

“In offering the menus to patients, the hospitals made a strategic decision to avoid the term [vegan] on labels accompanying food trays out of concern that it would turn off diners, Ms. Morgenstern said.”

It’s true! Veganism has a branding issue. Hopefully that will shift over time and people will start to be excited for vegan options.

Nonetheless, kudos to NYC Health + Hospitals for rolling this out.

The article didn’t go into the potential health benefits of this shift, but I did some digging and found this NYC Health + Hospitals press release from January 2023. Here’s what stood out to me:

“For decades we have known that healthy eating is one of the best preventive and health-improvement strategies we have at our disposal,” said J. Chad Teeters, MD, MBA, MS, FACC, a cardiologist and the Immediate-Past President of the American College of Cardiology’s New York chapter. “Plant-based diets in particular have proven to be one of the most powerful tools to prevent and, in some cases, to help reverse not only cardiovascular disease but also a host of other medical conditions.”

This shift to plant-based hospitals is the result of one of many initiatives from NYC Mayor Eric Adams who lives a mostly plant-based lifestyle. The Plant Based Treaty website provides a quick overview of all actions NYC is taking to address the climate crisis and improve people’s health.

This is really exciting. The times they are a-changing, folks!

✌🏻❤️🥬

Katie