A few days ago I decided to invite my family to eat at a vegetarian restaurant to celebrate my birthday. Between the saturation of turkeys, roasts, seafood and other Christmas celebrations in which one often does not have much choice, I wanted, on the one hand, an option in which vegetables were the protagonist and, on the other hand, , maybe also probe the reactions a little.
My partner and I have been following a flexitarian diet for some time. Practically vegan at home, since outside, for work, we often don’t have that option. It is not about explaining here the hows or whys of this option in which legumes and fresh vegetables predominate, but simply establishing the context. And, in that context, I wanted to see how the next generation would react to the possibility of such a festive meal outside the home, something we had never done before.
I was quite surprised by the acceptance of the proposal at the first attempt, without any expression of surprise or reluctance. And I was very surprised by the success of the dishes that each one chose and how some were curious to try what the others had received. But I was even more surprised that, during dinner, my daughter, who is 17 years old, told us that she often, when she goes out with her friends for a drink, opts for a chickpea burger. “Why?” this member of Generation
What for my parents’ generation was, probably and as a general rule, a political position taking, something absolutely unusual in the face of the possibilities of a developmentalism that turned the daily consumption of meat into a status symbol, and for us a decision thoughtful and still very minority, for them it is something natural, something that is there without any of those connotations, one more option, as valid as the others.
And, although we often do not realize it, the world changes around us much faster than it seems, also in terms of food. A sector in which, however, we are very accustomed to high-sounding gestures of resistance, from statements around the steak to the point of some, to photos on social networks in front of a steak of others. That generates noise, bar conversations and some jokes that we soon get bored of, but meanwhile, in a more quiet way, reality continues to transform at its own pace.
It is true that we do not have too much data on this matter, much less official, but all the data that exists, here as in any country around us, points in the same direction: vegetarian options are growing from year to year and we have not yet reached, far from it, the peak.
We are facing the great dietary change so far this century. And that is why it is surprising that the Food Consumption Report in Spain 2022, published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the most extensive set of data we have on this topic, dedicates less than two paragraphs of its almost 580 paragraphs to the issue. pages. I have no data, but there is no doubt that whoever designed it is closer to my generation than my daughter’s.
In any case, those few lines reveal something that anyone who is a little attentive may have intuited: the number of vegetarians, although still small in relative terms, 3.6% of the population, has doubled in Spain in the last five years.
3.6% does not seem like much, especially if we compare it with 15% in the United Kingdom, 14% in Switzerland or 10% in Sweden, but it is more than 1.7 million people. 2.1 million if we add vegans. Although that is probably not the most relevant information. According to a study by the consulting firm Lantern, in Spain in 2021 there were more than 5 million of what they call veggies, that is, the sum of vegans, vegetarians and flexitarians (understood as people who do not consume meat or fish at home, although they do They do it occasionally at celebrations or restaurants).
The data is already from three years ago, which suggests that, at the growth rate that has been observed since 2017, between 15% and 20% annually, today we are surely moving between 7.5 and 8 million inhabitants who would fall into that category. These are numbers that are equivalent, to give us an idea of ??the magnitude, to the total votes obtained by any of the two main state-level parties in the last elections. As if all PP voters, or all PSOE voters, who I don’t want anyone to feel singled out, were vegetarians. I would have a hard time arguing that those are not figures that we should take into consideration.
We are still far from the European average, where some studies speak of more than a quarter of the population if these three groups are added, but the growth is striking and sustained. And it is, especially, because a fundamental part of this increase occurs in an age group: that between 18 and 34 years old.
Not so long ago it was practically impossible, perhaps with the sole exception of the proposal by chef Rodrigo de La Calle, to find starred restaurants in Spain, or those in that range, that included vegetarian options. Nor has it been that long since an important (and very noisy) part of the gastronomic world put its hands on its head when Daniel Humm decided that the offer of his restaurant Eleven Madison Park, recognized with three stars by the Michelin Guide and considered the best in the world by the 50 Best list in 2017, became exclusively vegetarian.
And yet, there are the figures on consumer habits, showing that, whether we like it or not, the trend continues to grow. Today they are still a minority, but plant-based menus in restaurants of the range we are talking about have ceased to be a rarity and have become something increasingly common.
The interesting thing about this issue is that it is far from being linked to an ideology or specific beliefs. Of course there are creeds that influence this, but apart from them or, rather, in addition to them, there is a growing layer of the population that, either out of sensitivity towards animal welfare, or out of concern regarding environmental problems , due to ideological tendency or for health-related issues, opts for these forms of eating as something everyday and normalized.
I think it is important to be aware of these changes, why they occur, what they respond to and what magnitude they have; because that implies, above all, that we will be thinking about how we feed ourselves and the implications that our decisions in that area, as in any other, entail. And I also think that it is important that we think about whether our reluctance or those of our environment regarding this issue cannot be an acquired habit, a remnant of a past with less information and undoubtedly developed in another environmental and economic context that is called to go. disappearing
It is true, I insist, that they continue to be minority options, but that does not mean that their potential for development in the future is not evident. And, on the other hand, the fact that something is a minority does not imply that its interest is equally small nor, at least until now, is it something that has stopped us from paying attention to a phenomenon when it seems right to us.
Surely the closest proof, since we talk about our relationship with food, is in the number of pages that we dedicate each week to giving our opinion on restaurants of a certain range, a range that is a minority within the restaurant sector and whose use , yes, it is absolutely anecdotal within the consumption habits of the Spanish. If percentages haven’t stopped us in that case, why should they now?
