Episode 45: Nital Jethalal on Plant-Based Eating Patterns in the GTA

In this episode we talk to Nital Jethalal -- a plant-based policy analyst and economist with Plant-Based Data and the president of VegTO, a Toronto-based non-profit that seeks to inspire people to choose healthier, greener, and more compassionate lifestyles. Nital is also the co-founder and chair of the Veg Climate Network and sits on the board of directors for the Toronto Vegetarian Food Bank.

In our conversation, we talk about a recent survey conducted by VegTO and the Angus Reid Institute that looked at food choices and awareness in the G-T-A. It found two in three residents want to reduce their meat consumption and that over 85 percent say they are aware of the impacts of animal products on the environment. We get into these findings and many others… and what they mean moving forward.

Socials

Plant Based Data

VegTO

TO Veg Food Bank 

Veg Climate Network

Studies/Links

“Food Choices & Awareness in the Greater Toronto Area” (2022)

“Will People Cut Down the Amount of Meat They Eat for the Planet?  For many the answer is no” (2022)

“Survey Finds that 77% of Canadians Understand the Harmful Impacts of Eating Meat” (2020)

“Food Politics: How the food industry influences nutrition and health” Marion Nestle (2008)

“Regenesis: Feeding the world without devouring the planet” (2022) - George Monbiot

“A Menu for Change: Using behavioural science to promote sustainable diets around the world” (2020)

“The Economic Burden of Not Meeting the Canada Food Guide Recommendations” (2018) - Lieffers et al

Food Empowerment Project

Apex Advocacy

“Can Lifestyle Changes Reverse Coronary Heart Disease?” - Dean Ornish (1990) 

“Geography, International Trade & Political Mobilization in US Industries”  - Marc
Busch (2001) 

“Bloodless Revolution” - Tristan Stuart (2008) 

Doug Evans “The Sprout Book” (2020)

“Nudge” (2008)

 The China Study

C40 Good Food Cities Declaration

Canadian Institute for Health Information

 “Sapiens” - Yuval Noah Harari (2011)

“Animal Liberation” - Peter Singer (1975)

Sacred Economics (2011) - Charles Eisenstein 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Plant-Based Canada Podcast. Join us as we talk with experts to explore the field of nutritional sciences and how our food choices impact our health and the environment. We sit down with Canadian doctors, dietitians, athletes, climate experts, and more to break down the evidence behind a Whole Foods plant-based diet and discuss the practical steps you can take in your effort to shift toward a healthier lifestyle. Today I'm joined by Neathal Jethal, a plant-based policy analyst and economist with plant-based data and the president of VegTO, a Toronto-based nonprofit that seeks to inspire people to choose healthier, greener, and more compassionate lifestyles. Neathhal is also the co-founder and chair of the Veg Climate Network and sits on the board of directors for the Toronto Vegetarian Food Bank. In our conversation today, we talk about a recent survey conducted by VegTO and the Angus Reed Institute that looked at food choices and awareness and the GTA. It found two in three residents want to reduce their meat consumption, and that over 85% say they are aware of the impacts of animal products on the environment. We get into these findings and many more. Okay, Nithal, thank you so much for coming on the Plant-Based Canada podcast. We appreciate your time. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. So when did the idea of plant-based eating patterns become a part of how you approached your work?

SPEAKER_01 1:21

So I was born vegetarian and always questioned how the world I grew up in automatically accepted the suffering, exploitation, and death of animals for personal pleasure. So my worldview made me predisposed to pay attention to plant-based diets. But connecting the dots around how powerfully they can be as a Swiss Army policy solution, that was a slow burn that developed over time. Started with seeing the power of whole food plant-based diets firsthand through my father over 25 years ago. He's a plant-based physician who's been practicing medicine for over 50 years. In 1995, he discovered Dr. Dean Ornish's research on diet, lifestyle, and heart disease, which was kind of an early blueprint for lifestyle medicine. And within months, he was incorporating its tenets, which included an emphasis on low-fat animal-free diets into his own practice. And honestly, Clint, seeing the changes in his patients was astounding. You couldn't even recognize some of them just a few months after they dished animal products and moved to whole plant-based foods. Patients lost a ton of weight, cleared up asthma or skin issues, uh, even reversed their type 2 diabetes. And I still remember one of his patients who was a candidate for a triple bypass. It was essentially a walking heart attack. Couldn't tie his shoes without wheezing. And after visiting my father and shifting his diet, he was going for long walks and then jogging within months. And heart disease was a particular area my dad was passionate about. It's the number one, it was the number one cause and still is of death globally. Today I think it's claims over 50,000 lives a day. And South Asians typically have higher rates of heart disease. And we're South Asian. My dad was very active in the South Asian community, plus, his own father had died from a heart attack while he was in med school. So he really jumped into action when he realized he could help a lot of people by getting the word out on nutrition and lifestyle. And he really made a difference. To this day, people still come up to him on the street thanking him. His practice didn't just open my eyes to the power of whole plant-based foods, but also to how much one person can influence the lives of others. One of his grateful patients, Harun Siddiqui, also happened to be an editor at the Toronto Star and asked him to write a monthly column on nutrition, which my siblings and I would help him type up. So the specifics around the powers of eating patterns, like the benefits of fiber and the harms of dairy, really creeped into all of us, whether we liked it or not. And because of them, we all ate tons of fruit. Although it would still take me years to phase out animal products. And on top of these columns, my dad would frequently give talks around Toronto in which he would talk about how powerful dietary change can be for the healthcare system. His favorite analogy for the mindset of healthcare was a picture of an overflowing sink with two doctors trying to fix the problem by mopping the floor instead of turning off the faucet. It's actually crazy to think for how much nutritional research has evolved since he was in med school over 50 years ago. Med students today received pretty much the same amount of training in nutrition that he did, which is usually just a few hours over years. Anyways, I think it was these talks of his that probably played the biggest influence on my thinking about how powerful removing animals from our systems can be.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yeah, these personal stories about turning around somebody's health can be extremely powerful, but there's so many different ways to come to this realization. You talk about biodiversity loss, uh, animal welfare side of things. So, how did paying more attention to the role of animals in our society develop into thinking about system change for you?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

In terms of thinking systems change, a lot of it did start with healthcare because of my father. Removing animals from our healthcare system still seems like such a no-brainer. Globally, heart disease and diabetes kill more people than every other disease combined. And overconsumption of animals is a key driver of those two diseases. And in Canada, we're spending over a quarter of a trillion dollars on healthcare today, which is roughly $7,000 a person. The average bypass surgery alone here costs about $10K. Another big development came through seeing the role of animals in agriculture and trade. I studied a lot of trade policy and political economy during my degrees at Queen's University, which really opened my eyes to competition subsidies and protectionism overall in agriculture. Globally, ag is roughly just 4% of GDP. And yet, it remains one of the most heavily protected and subsidized industries in the world. In the US, it contributes to less than 1% of GDP, and yet there is dairy production in pretty much every state. This is no accident. Producing in every state allows industry to maximize their lobbying Congress. So developing insights into how these special interests organize and maximize leverage was pretty important. So is uh developing an understanding around how rampant subsidies are in agriculture, which are trade distorting and should not play a large role in our neoliberal global free trade system. My mentor at the time, Dr. Mark Bush, had done groundbreaking research that showed that dispute settlement, which is the backbone of the global trading system, doesn't actually encourage early settlement when there are disputes, as it's designed to. Instead, it incentivizes countries to dig in their heels and prolong these disputes, especially where strong special interests like animal ag are at play. So WTO members don't get punished, as they should, for distorting free trade through subsidies, which means the system basically unintentionally incentivizes countries to cheat. Rich countries distorting free trade in ag really harms poorer countries too, where agriculture is a much larger share of GDP. So there were lots of benefits to consider from dismantling domestic support systems and removing animals from our food supply. And one other big influence in expanding my perspective here on the need for systems change was working in strategic policy at Agriculture and Agrifood Canada, or AAFC, which was in 2005. I was involved as a junior analyst on an MC, which is a memorandum to cabinet and how policy change happens, that focused on transitioning Northern Ontario tobacco farmers who had somehow successfully lobbied their MP that they were in crisis, despite the fact they had faced a steadily declining demand curve for years, uh, into other crops like asparagus or ginseng. The whole transition program wasn't well planned and ended up being a bit of a shit show that had major downstream impacts. My thinking back then was that dairy would be heading down the same path as tobacco and that we could save a lot of money by avoiding similar bailouts like Ontario tobacco, which was over 1.5 billion back then, if we better prepared to transition dairy producers into other work. And since supply is generally more inelastic when it comes to animal production, the planning should have a longer runway. Also, I'd been told that I was brought into AFC to connect health and ag policy, which never really happened, but it all got me thinking: what if the cane population shifted plant-based and we applied some of the savings we'd be sure to see in healthcare to help transition animal producers towards more productive work? It would be quite the win-win. And this was the thought that would later become my rough working thesis. Also, my three years at AEFC gave me some insight into just how costly it can be to support animal agriculture overall, not just through direct support, but through production insurance and programs like traceability. And I realized that it's way more productive to influence decision makers by lobbying for something instead of against it. So I do encourage all my fellow advocates out there to think about how they can incentivize decision makers by pointing to alternative programs that can work. We can get to some options around that later.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Yeah, this is all very interesting, especially, you know, the amount of research that you clearly have done around systems change and policy change is not something that we've had time to really delve into on this podcast before. We've talked about environmental impact and um animal agriculture and things like that. But I'm curious, before you mentioned your mentor and studying at university, but were there certain books or studies or research that you came across that influenced how you thought about things that really sparked your interest? Anything that's that's specific that stood out to you?

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Oh, yeah. I mean tons since it has been a slow burn, as I mentioned, for over two decades, but I won't be able to list them all, but I'll flag some. Just off the top, in terms of veganism, Peter Singer's Animal Liberation definitely helped me cross the finish line in phasing out all animal products. And Brendan Brazier and Rich Rolls' books were really helpful in getting me to see that one can actually excel athletically by avoiding animal-based foods. And the China study was also pretty big for me in appreciating how much disease can vary between people with similar DNA and activity levels simply based on what they eat. But in terms of thinking about the evolution, evolution of food systems, which we're on the cusp of seeing more of soon because a new food tech books by you know all you've all no Harari, like Sapiens and James Scott's Against the Grain come to mind. They really snapped agriculture into perspective for me in terms of evolution. I liked how Harari notes that even though the agreement uh is one of three major revolutions that have shaped our history over the past 200,000-ish years, with the cognitive and scientific revolutions being the other two, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that it was just 10,000 years ago, which means agriculture as a system has only been around for about 5% of our existence. And moving to these systems didn't necessarily make our lives any easier at all. There is also Tristan Stewart's Bloodless Revolution and Marcia Zarasco's Meat Hooked. Those types of books help me appreciate that meat and dairy haven't been as prominent in humanity as we've been led to believe, and that at many periods over time, some of the biggest minds have all questioned the need to eat animals. Professor Marion Nessel's food politics really opened my eyes to just how big the revolving door is between food policy and industry. The fact that former CEO of the Dairy Export Council, Tom Vilsack, is now the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, which he was under Obama too, by the way, is a good example of how incestuous government and industry are when it comes to food policy. And by the way, uh Mary Nessel has a good blog, foodpolitics.com, that people can check out if this sort of stuff interests them. And there's also generally been a lot of work on food justice that's profoundly opened my eyes over the year. And it's a topic uh in particular that I continue to um develop and learning around. Powerful activists and authors, names like Angela Davis and Carol Adams are coming to my mind, help me appreciate just how much issues of social justice, misogyny, and human rights are connected to food. And by the way, just on that, I think many animal rights advocates uh would be well served to learn more about the intersection of food and justice. For me, it's the most under-discussed intersection with food today, from how livestock was used by colonizers to destabilize indigenous cultures and territory to the more modern, widespread injustices people of color and marginalized communities especially face in today's food system. I suspect that there are a lot of advocates out there doing great work who are fighting for human rights who might consider cutting back or giving up animal products altogether if they were more aware of the impact their food choices are having on our fellow humans. Like, for example, uh there's a ton of environmental racism behind meat and dairy production. The work of uh Chris Eubanks at Apex Advocacy is actually pretty powerful on this topic and definitely opened my eyes. It's just really sad that slaughterhouses are actively set up and often in poor and marginalized areas where they think they'll face the least resistance and pushback. In fact, I just watched a documentary recently called The Smell of Money that covers this topic powerfully too, for any documentary film fans out there. And in VegTO's poll last year, which I'm sure we'll get to, the impact of animal products and human rights was identified as the area people lack awareness in the most, including vegetarians and vegans. And by the way, for my fellow vegans out there, food justice goes beyond animal products. Just because a chocolate bar is vegan, for example, it doesn't make it cruelty-free. So people should try to look for fair trade labels where they're available. And um organizations like Food Empowerment Project have had a powerful influence on me in this area. Plus, they also just generally put out great materials. And they have this cool chocolate list app you can download and use to scan whether a company is sourcing from slave-free labor. And be actually just beyond books and research, being a part of the Toronto Vegetarian Food Bank has also made me appreciate how accessibility plays an issue with food choice. In Ontario, about one in six households were food insecure last year. And in this area, uh Doug Evans has had an influence on me. He he wrote the Sprout Book, which was very impactful. Not only did I just start sprouting all the time, but it's led me to see and believe that sprouting can really be a bit of a small silver bullet, like one small but key low-cost, nutritious, and simple tool for addressing food security and accessibility issues. In terms of work that specifically influenced my research, um, the plant-heavy 2018 Canada Food Guide had a huge impact on me, especially after seeing how um AAFC lobbied Health Canada to take it easy on animal products, which I'm proud to say Health Canada did not cape into. So shout out to Dr. Alfred Aziz and his team in the Office of Nutrition Policy and Promotion at Health Canada. And finally, behavioral economics research, like the book Nudge, also influenced my perspectives a lot. Nudges are about shifting our choice architecture to allow us to make better choices while preserving our freedom. So, as basic as it sounds, how we frame choices for people really impacts what they end up choosing. And as you can imagine, that has a lot of policy implications. I know nudge theory has come under a bit of fire recently for several reasons, but in terms of real life applications with food, there are definitely powerful programs out there that are worth knowing about, like Greener by Default, which uses nudges to get people eating more plant-based, and they're highly successful. In terms of my research as well, uh, I would like to shout out a little known study that helped me appreciate the importance of quantifying the impact diet can have on healthcare. There's this paper by Leafers et al. in 2018 on the economic burden of not meeting food recommendations in Canada that found that not meeting these food guide, the Canada food guide recommendations costs us almost 14 billion a year. Just the burden from not eating enough fruits and vegetables alone here is about 4.5 billion, which got me to think about other research in that area. And I end up finding that the US reducing meat consumption to within modest health guidelines would save almost 200 billion a year there. And just generally, there's other research that shows globally the annual savings would be about 970 billion. So, yeah, just the economic benefits from healthcare shifts alone. Uh, that research like this outlines in terms of the impact it would have, uh, we shifted say systems animal free. They're pretty huge. Which by the way, it does remind me, I forgot to mention, on the topic of large-scale economic systems change, there is a key book here uh to mention, Sacred Economics, which is by Charles Eisenstein from 2011. Eisenstein kind of talks about the original purpose of money, how it's to simply connect human gifts and services with human needs so that we might all live in greater abundance. And he covers how today instead it's come to generate scarcity rather than abundance and separation rather than human connection. It's a powerful history, I think we ought to all know. Partly because I think it's undeniable that one of the biggest systems challenges facing humanity today is income inequality. With one percent of the world's population holding half the wealth, ten percent of the world's population holds eighty-five percent of the wealth out there. Meanwhile, over half the world holds just one percent of the wealth. And there are key areas that are discussed, like cracking down on offshore and corporate tax havens, raising the minimum wage, maybe, that are improvements, but they're within our current system, which folks like Eisenstein do incorporate, but also look beyond to how structurally the growth-oriented system that we're in can be shifted to one of degrowth harmoniously and to the benefit of all. And sorry, oh my god. Harmoniously makes me realize there's one last, probably the key book that I left off this list, which is Regenesis by George Mambio, which was only recently released, and I actually uh admittedly have not completely finished since I keep going back to rereading or re-listening to certain chapters. It's just such a wealth of information. And I have to give credit to Anita Kreintz, uh, whose name I'm sure most listeners will recognize, uh, who really pushed me to prioritize this one, and it doesn't disappoint. It is a must-read, Clint, for everyone interested in changing food systems out there, and it will profoundly broaden your lens to appreciate the entirety of the situation and the solutions uh available to us. I was just telling uh Nick recently that I never knew much about Ian Tolhurst before, aka Toly, who's the British farmer Mambio writes about in depth and has defied all conventional farming practices, to establish a what's not just an animal-free, but manure and pesticide-free organic farm that seems to be the paragon of sustainability and biodiversity with over a hundred different types of crops, all on land that wasn't considered suitable for vegetable production to begin with. So, yeah, even without the widespread adoption of tech like precision fermentation and cell ag, which Mambi also gets into, by the way, there are brilliant best practices out there right now that we can look to uh and adopt in accelerating this race we're all on to save our planet and its future generations. And I know there are other groups like the veganic organic regenerative farming group, which is active on Facebook. I hear a lot about this from Matt Noble now, who's started studying uh similar models. So much of the answer lies out there today in food production and and food choices.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

That's a fantastic list of references you just you just laid out there. So I and a lot of them I have not I've not heard of. And I think they're listening to you talk about them, they're very unique perspectives and often things that we don't always think about. I we should I'll get some of those from you, and we'll have to link some of those in the uh show notes for listeners because they sound really interesting and I want to read some of those. So you just alluded to it, but on the topic of food choice, so you're the president of the board of directors at VegTO, and they recently released some exciting results from Toronto's first poll ever on food choices and awareness. Please tell us a bit more about this, uh, how and why you did it, and what are some of the main findings?

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Yeah, uh, we're actually in the process of sharing these results widely, so I'd be very happy to. So, just quickly on the on the how, uh, thanks to Generous Silent Donor last year, we were able to hire Angus Reed, uh Canada's oldest polling firm, to run a custom poll of our design of about 25 questions. The overall sample size was just over a thousand people, uh, n equals a thousand and eight. We actually doubled down the size of the 18 and 34-year-old demographic in the poll, given how heavily this group is driving the plant-based movement. And the results were broken down by age, gender, income, education, location, and ethnicity. We also brought in five other vegan nonprofits to ask at least one question related to their area. And they were the Toronto Vegetarian Food Bank, Animal Justice, Reimagined Agriculture, Educators for Animals, and Plant-Based Health Professionals, which included input from plant-based Canada's own Dr. Kasam. So that's kind of the how. As for the why, there were three uh basic drivers. One, to gather data and develop some dietary profiles of the city, two, to develop insight into people's food choices, and three, to enable and empower advocacy, not just for ourselves at VegTO, but also for these other allies I just missed it, listed, as well as other advocates out there, some of whom I hope might be listening. It's been cool to see other groups reach reach out since we recently made these results public, telling us that they plan on using the data in their work. So that's I'll cover the dietary profile data first. So on the dietary profiles, we found through the poll that 3% of the Greater Toronto area is vegetarian, 2.6% are vegan, 10% are flexitarian, which we define as primarily vegetarian with occasional meat or fish, and 3% are pescatarian, which together means roughly 20% of the population is already restricting or abstaining for meat in some form, and roughly 80% have no dietary preferences. And flexitarians are just an important group to flag off the bat since globally I've seen stats as high as one in four consumers around the world identify as flexitarian. Although I Never hear anybody use that term. I don't know if you do. I don't hear people going around saying they're flexitarian. But, anyways, on flexitarians, we found that women are twice as likely as men to be flexitarian, and 34 to 40 to 55 year olds are twice as likely. And older flexitarians in the city are reducing meat more for health, while younger ones are uh doing it more for the environment. On to the uh vegetarian and vegan profiles, and just an FYI, that 6% uh roughly of the 1008 sample we had means that the sample sizes for these two groups were actually too small to dry to draw precise conclusions without a wide margin of error. But that said, there are some broad trends worth noting. Uh, one, the vegetarian population looks to be driven by people under 55, for example. And kind of surprisingly sometimes to us to some, uh, many vegetarians don't seem to be planning on going vegan. That might surprise some people. And in our poll, when we did a bit of a deeper dive, we realized that religion was identified as playing a much bigger role for vegetarians in their food choices than for any other group, which might explain why they are so happy to stay uh within that lane. And uh on vegans, the vegan population in Toronto looks to be slightly female driven and is definitely younger. And these younger vegans are vocal about their veganism. They're more likely to be part of a vegan community and engaged in some form of activism. And also, it's worth noting that kids under the age of 16 are obviously not included in this in our sample, which start at 18-year-olds and up. And yet, this is a demographic that's most likely to be vegan and vegetarian, basically in cities around the world. Last year there was a poll by BBC's Good Food that found that 8% of UK kids aged 5 to 16 are vegan, and 15% more would like to be. So there's good reason to believe the vegan numbers will trend upwards in the future. And just in terms of the overall numbers uh here, which some people might be bummed or find low, just two quick points there. One, the vegan numbers are similar to other major cities. London has the same percentage as us, Berlin is just above us at 3%. And even the V very vegan-friendly Tel Aviv is just over 4%. Two, it's also important to focus on growth rates more than absolute numbers here, which tend to be much higher in veganism uh for veganism here than other diets. Dalhousie has these two had these two national surveys, uh 2018 and 2020, for example, that showed the growth in veganism in Canada between those two years was 84%. That's that's a high growth rate. To put it that into perspective, if to put this into perspective, if the vegan population in Toronto, which works to roughly 150,000 people today, were to grow at just 20% a year, there'd be nearly nearly a million vegans here in a decade. Uh moving to the totally other end of the spectrum for be from veganism, about four and a half percent of the GTA is eating a high meat diet, whether it's keto, paleo, or carnivore, which means that for every vegan in the GTA, there's someone following a keto diet, and for every two of us, there's someone eating a carnivore diet, which for those who aren't familiar is exactly how it sounds. They literally eat just meat and eggs. It's important to pay attention to these numbers, I think, because these diets aren't just terrible for animals, but they're extremely unhealthy in the long run. Low-carb animal-based diets have consistently been linked to much higher risk of all-cause death, heart disease, and some cancers in the long term. And there are zero long-term medical studies of the carnivore diet, even though celebrities like Joe Rogan are out there promoting it frequently. Also, this group is one of the loudest in supporting popular greenwashing arguments out there around regenerative animal agriculture and holistic grazing. Yes, regenerative animal agricultural meat can be seen as an improvement to those from factory farms, but environmentally, they consume far more land and lead to higher methane. So, given how popular uh this area, regen animal ag is becoming today, I really do encourage people out there to get familiar with some of the subject matter if they can. And I think you had on both of my two colleagues at Plant Based Data, Nick Carter and Tushar Metha, who have done some great work in this area. And uh people can learn a bit more about at plantbasedata.org. There's also a great website, uh Grazingfacts.com by the Center for Biological Diversity and a Wellfed World that provides some great facts that tackles uh great facts and then also uh tackles the top 10 myths about grazing. By the way, uh this is the type of work uh VegTO has been doing more of recently. So if folks like this sort of stuff, I encourage them to become members at Veg.ca where for 25 bucks a year they can also get discounts to the 80-ish vegan businesses and restaurants around Toronto. So that's enough on the dietary profiles and the shameless plugs.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

So this all sounds like very useful data. There's some very interesting findings that you have in there. Um, what were some of the other key insights or themes that emerged as you were teasing out some of this data?

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Right. Uh absolutely. So there that was just the dietary profiles. And then we did ask a bunch of questions, um, a lot of tables where people could say agree or disagree or um other options. And I should note before we dive in here, uh, that people listen can visit veg.ca backslash poll to download the data and watch the webinar where we presented a bunch of the main findings um with our five partners, including Zara, uh, in case they want to learn a little bit more about what I'm about to talk about. So the biggest finding was that despite the fact that 85% of people here eat animal products daily, almost two-thirds want to reduce their meat consumption. And the youth are clearly the driving force here, with over three-quarters of them wanting to eat less meat. But it's not just them. Half of people over 55 do as well. And there's widespread support for more plant-based foods in Toronto. A whopping 94% said they would support, they do support more plant-based foods in public spaces, which includes schools, government buildings, hospitals, and food courts. And over half noted that they would eat more plant-based foods in these spaces if they were more widely available. The poll also revealed a lot of interesting data around what influences food choice. Almost 90% cited availability as a key influence on their food choice, even more than price, which means accessibility is still a key barrier to people eating more plant-based. And indeed, we found uh, I think it was just over half said they would eat uh go vegan or vegetarian today if they found it easier. And the data also reflects that friends and family, 63% identified, have a stronger influence on what people eat than do their ethical beliefs, culture, or community, and a much stronger influence than social or mass media. So the people around us really do seem to impact our food choices. In terms of eating out, omnivores identified that more vegan options in restaurants is a bigger motivator to adopt a plant-based lifestyle than having more vegan restaurants in general. So getting more vegan options in restaurants is key, which will be a bigger focus for veg TO in the future. There's also some interesting data around recidivism. We found that just over a third of Torontonians have tried veganism or vegetarianism before, which means when you think about the fact that less than 6% are today, lots of people are still giving up on vegetarianism or veganism. And uh it underscores the importance of providing meaningful and ongoing support, especially to new vegans. The good news is that three in five say they are still open to veganism or vegetarianism in the future. Uh the poll also revealed a lot of bit of awareness. A surprisingly high number of respondents, 85%, reported being aware of the impacts of animal products on the environment. And almost half the city says they're already doing, already avoiding some foods for the environment. But when we drilled down a specific foods clint, we found that only 10% are actually avoiding red meat, 6% avoiding seafood, and just 2% are avoiding chicken, eggs, or cheese for environmental reasons. Also, super weird, but twice as many people are avoiding soft drinks for the environment than they are eggs or cheese. So, anyways, there's a huge gap between action and awareness here. And it's a gap that shows up in the health data too. 90% of the GTA says they avoid certain foods for health, but again, when we drill down on specific foods, few are actually avoiding animal products for health reasons. Just 16% said they're avoiding red meat, 12% uh cheese, and fewer than one in 20 people are avoiding seafood, eggs, or chicken for health reasons. And yet, maddeningly, 15% say they're avoiding soy for health reasons. Which is nuts. Whole or low processed soy is actually beneficial and protective against breast and prostate cancer. So it's still pretty frustrating that so many people continue to avoid it, especially considering there's actually more soy in chicken than in tofu. I didn't realize this until I saw uh shout out to Youth Climate Save for uh giving me the stat last week. I didn't appreciate, but it takes roughly 110 grams of soy to produce 100 grams of chicken breast. And the poll also tackled a unique area when it comes to major health findings. We didn't just ask about awareness, but we asked about skepticism on seven major health findings that frankly ought to be well established by now. As Zara said in our webinar, just as we know that with the same level of confidence that cigarettes cause lung cancer, we know with that same certainty since 2015 that processed meat like bacon, hot dogs, and pepperoni is a carcinogen. And yet 27% of the city is skeptical of this connection, and another 20% aren't aware. And over half were skeptical or unaware that vegans and vegetarians have lower risks of major chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers, uh, which is another well-established finding. So, for all the interest in plant-based foods and lifestyles, there's a lot of room for health professionals to dispel beliefs that still to be, still seem to be commonly held that animal products are actually bad for us. And in fact, when we ask generally if people feel diets with animal products are healthier, over half sadly said yes. Finally, it's worth sharing uh finding around perceptions. The polls show that about a third of respondents have a negative reaction to the word veganism. Look, there's always going to be a group that's anti-vegan. Uh, and this seems to be roughly the percentage, 30% in many other surveys, but it's still worth flagging to others who like us strongly identify with any label, not just vegan, that labels can be counterproductive in certain situations. And in this case, most notably when it comes to promoting food. There's um this team, the behavioral insights team, which is also uh known as the Nudge Unit, which has a report from 2020 entitled A Menu for Change, where they discuss some of the research, uh, in which they bring up this 2017 uh report example, or I think it was just a survey, uh, by the Buy and Better Lab, which commissioned a social media analytics company, Brandwatch, to scan over 15 million social media posts, blogs, and forums that included references to plant-based, vegan, and vegetarian foods. And they found that the term vegan was more than twice as likely to be used negatively in a negative context as plant-based was, which isn't to suggest there's anything wrong with these words, vegan or uh vegan or veganism, but just a note that we should be mindful that the vegan lexicon can be quite divisive and perhaps rather than jumping into battles over it, we can instead broaden the mainstream appeal by using languages that avoid uh an us them mentality. In fact, last week I was checking out this webinar by Humane Society International, which was great. It was through their program Forward Food, which focused on how food service establishments are succeeding with plant-based options. And uh there were chefs where chefs and culinary directors from daycare, schools, universities, and food service providers all shared encouraging signs of success and how they've been shifting their menus plant-based. And one key takeaway from everyone that was part of this webinar was that they simply avoid using vegan labels, even plant-based at times. And instead, they just focused on describing foods themselves. Someone asked in the QA, like what were some of the most popular dishes? And I remember the debite from uh Sidexco mentioning uh a cashew foie gras. So I found that kind of interesting. And also, I should probably note that we have plans in terms of putting the data to use. So, one area it should be very helpful is getting city officials and decision makers to realize that they have widespread support and taking more food-related climate action in the city, which would be positive since Toronto is one of the 15 good C40 good food cities out there, which means that the city has had a commitment since 2019 actually to support an overall increase of healthy plant-based food consumption. But so far, not much has been done besides a commitment through the new net zero policy framework here called Transform TO to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the uh food the city procures by 25% by 2030. So we'll definitely be looking to promote some of these findings, uh, also through the media while we continue to work with our partners and other stakeholders to hopefully get the city, schools, and others to commit to making plant-based foods more widely available and featured more in their menus. Anyways, I think that's probably enough for the high notes from the Veg Teo poll. Again, people can consult veg.ca slash poll if they want to learn more. And we also have a spot there on the website where people can provide input on what they would like to ask in future polls.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

These themes you found are very, very interesting. I think some are, while maybe frustrating, are at least insightful um about how to move forward. Um, I think having a behavioral scientist on to talk about some of these things would be very interesting. I am not surprised when you mention all the misinformation and the food myths. I, you know, anyone in this space, uh the plant-based or plant-predominant space, will know mostly on, I think even on a daily basis, we'll have to contend with age-old myths about protein or soy, like you just mentioned, things that have been debunked for a long time, or the fact that the World Health Organization, you know, classified processed meat as a type one carcinogen in 2015, and yet so much of the city doesn't know about it. There was a study that was done on Twitter and how how it took factual information from credible sources and then misinformation, and it looked at how those two differed in terms of how they differed in terms of the spread online. And the misinformation, not surprisingly, spread six times faster than the actual facts. The problem is that no matter how many times you have people fact-checking or you you post something else that says, look, this was wrong, this is the fact, it doesn't matter because those things are they get lodged into people's brains, and then they see one tweet, and then that's they don't fact-check it and they move on, and now that's just fact in their brain. This is all very, very, very interesting stuff that you know each one of these things you could go on forever about. And then also to mention the the some of the ideological things, the vegetarians identifying with their religion as one of the reasons for going, like that's that's also very interesting and involves a whole other conversation. And the family members, too. The family members being the most influential aspect about why a person chooses a certain diet is all very interesting. So I'm I'm sure that when you were going through this and and teasing out all this data, there's other polls that are similar, probably done in other cities. What what was what was how does the data that you found stack up to what you saw on other polls?

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Yeah, uh, great question. What you just mentioned, by the way, about the uh the Twitter study. I've I've definitely heard that before, and it is sad. It just got me thinking last night, plant proof, uh, Simon Hill, or sorry, the proof uh did a fact check on somebody that um Dr. Gabrielle Lyon that Mark Dr. Mark Hyman had on his podcast, and uh they totally got a key stat wrong in terms of what kills people over the age of 65, where they said it was false, but it turns out it's just of injury-related deaths, and it's still heart disease and cancer and stuff that kills them. So everybody's happy to see the fact check, but to your point, it's like I hope that makes its way around because that guy, Dr. Mark Hyman, has like 2.2 million people following him.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

He has a massive platform and he spreads misinformation all the time.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

Yeah. Okay, so let's see if we can brighten this up a little bit. So, yeah, this is a good question. Uh, a lot of the findings around the interest in meat reduction and in veganism do line up with a lot of what's been found out there already on the plus side. So those 2018 and 2020 Dalhousie polls that I mentioned earlier did find higher rates of vegetarianism across Canada, but in terms of veganism, the numbers aren't all that different, uh, which is should be a little heartwarming for those uh who are in Canada and can appreciate that that includes the prairies, where those rates are traditionally lower. And the interest in reducing meat consumption isn't unique to Toronto. That's also some good news. A Good Food Institute survey from September this year, uh, with a sample of over 4,000, I believe it was just under 4,100 people across four countries France, Germany, Italy, and Spain found that over half of the populations there have stopped eating meat products, and almost a quarter, on average, have reduced their meat consumption, which is pretty huge. And I should note our poll seemed to inspire other groups in Canada to take note and consider running their own. I believe Humane Society Vancouver, who consulted with me last week, guys, said they're planning to do this and to use Angus Reed. So I do hope that we get broader numbers with lower margins of error for Canadian vegans and vegetarians, from which we can, you know, extrapolate a little more. Now, unfortunately, on the bad news, uh, the disconnect we found between interest or awareness and action also lines up with other polls. Um, a 2020 national poll by Meatless Commissioned by Meatless Farm, for example, here in Canada, found that over three-quarters of Canadians understand the harmful impact of eating red meat, and yet fewer than 40% actually reduce their meat consumption. And this applies globally too. Ipsos Reed ran a huge poll between February and March this year, uh, with over 23,000 people across 31 countries where the respondents were between 60 and 74 years old. And generally uh they found that while most are concerned, most people are concerned about climate change, fewer than half say they're likely to reduce their meat consumption. So while it's great that there's more awareness out there around the harms of meat and dairy for both health and to some extent the environment, it's quite concerning that there are such large gaps between awareness and action. When I started down this path, I was all about raising awareness. I was so excited by what I was telling you. I saw in my father's practice. I thought people would change if they were just more aware. So much of the information back then was really new. And yet, so few of the people around me, um, friends and family closest to me, actually shifted. And more often than not, they tuned me out. And when I finally went fully vegan, I assumed that my activism should just naturally focus on exclusively awareness campaigns. But behavioral research has long questioned the value of awareness and getting people to change. So I definitely agree with you that getting a behaviorist would definitely be interesting uh for the podcast. Part of the problem is that once a certain level of awareness has been raised, they're actually rapidly diminishing returns to raising more of it. In most cases, in most cases, undesirable behavior simply isn't caused by a knowledge deficit. Surveys have shown for years, for example, that the vast majority of Canadians are against factory farms and yet continue to consume these products. People don't make decisions, particularly not the quick or tired or reflexive ones, if you will, that lead to so many non-ideal outcomes in this in their contemplative system two manner. For anybody familiar with um system one versus system two from thinking fast and slow, most of us use as little information as possible to make any given decision and rely on cognitive shortcuts or social cues. So many people eat burgers and milkshakes, for example, because they find them delicious or because of social pressure or because stress makes them seek out these foods, or for many other reasons that don't involve don't involve a whole lot of uh deep thought. They understand they're eating poorly, just like smokers understand that smoking is bad for them. If people did act on the information they have, we'd see way higher rates of veganism today. So so yeah, awareness can be overrated at times. Just making the case for advocates out there to consider activism or campaigns beyond simply raising awareness to action that focuses on transition or implementation, especially in level one or two areas like Toronto, where over half the city said they'd eat more plant-based foods if they were more widely available. And I should also just back up for a minute, uh, because I definitely don't mean to poop on awareness campaigns. There is a lot of value. As I mentioned, it's it's really only when people are aware and when they have a little bit of knowledge on that subject. There's plenty of areas where there is a knowledge deficit. And that Ipsos read poll I just mentioned across the 31 countries with 23,000 people. Nick um often shares this. There's um on the environmental side, people were asked about what individual to rank the individual action uh and impact of individual individual action they could take, uh, where it is in terms of benefits for the environment. And people ranked in recycling, I think, as number one, uh, well ahead of eating a vegan diet. So when it comes to uh certain areas like that and um human rights, as I mentioned to you before, where just under half the city, including vegans and vegetarians, say they don't know very much, there's definitely still a lot of room uh for value for. Raising awareness, but just to make the case that focusing on transition and implementation really is some an area that I've shifted my focus towards to make it easier on people to align their actions with their interests or their values.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

So this is a good segue to start talking about food system transition. We are definitely going to have you on in the future next year to go to really delve into how we move toward more plant-based food systems. But I want to ask in terms of the poll that you found, the themes that came out and the data that you found, what were some of the most useful things you found from there that you think would be useful when talking about food system transition?

SPEAKER_01 44:43

That's a good question. So I think the Hallmark finding is a good place to start that two-thirds are interested in reducing reconsumption because we also found it concurrently with against the backdrop of 85% are still eating animal products daily. So one really big area and something, a program that we're becoming increasingly involved in promoting, uh, at least I am in my work across the board, is uh Greener by Default, which is essentially a program that is about making plant-based options a default choice. And it has a seriously high rate of success. Um uptake is anywhere between 40 and 80% of people choose for plant-based meals uh when presented with them as the default option. People uh listening might have recently seen the exciting news that New York City hospitals, uh, their healthcare system, which is the biggest in the US, uh, just adopted that. And it was supposed to start with just lunch. It did just start with lunch, um, where uh it was so successful it also rolled out to dinners. So um just across the three million meals that they'll be serving at those hospitals in a year, about 900,000 have been shifted default plant-based. So that's a program anybody can look at if you go by greenerbydefault.com and look to implement. I also encourage, uh I think when we talked about support, uh, the finding that about half of people in Toronto said that they would do veganism, uh, do quote unquote veganism or vegetarianism, but they consider it easier right now, and that uh over a third said they're open to trying more uh vegans, that many people will be trying um veganism or vegetarianism in the future. I think, sorry, three in five said that. Signing people up for campaigns like Meatless Mondays or veganary is another good option. And VegTO will be doing a veganary campaign of some kind. Broadly, public information campaigns like these Meatless Mondays, Veganary Challenge 22, they do significantly influence individual animal product consumption. There's surveys that show that 40-ish percent, I believe, of survey respondents from the Meatless Mondays campaign influenced their decision to reduce or consider reducing their meat consumption. And uh, I remember from last year there was a six-month follow-up survey from Biganuary's uh campaign that found that 30% of non-vegan participants reported removing all animal products from their diets, and over half, I think, uh reported reducing their animal product intake by at least half. So that's two things people can do and also work with us. There's all sorts of pitches you can make to your local Omni restaurants or getting your company to consider offering more plant-based foods. And it really is just about figuring out. I really encourage everybody, don't just start with the people closest around you. Think about who you know that you can would have the biggest impact of influencing and start and maybe start there. And we're we're definitely happy to work with you uh in that end.

SPEAKER_00 47:34

Ethel, it's been a real pleasure to talk to you today. It's really interesting, like all the stuff you found was very interesting with this poll. And I think for people at home, knowing some of these overarching themes that that come out of these polls and knowing kind of where people's headspace is at uh in terms of plant-based switch is is can help, I think, make people make these choices or at least influence people to make better choices. Like I said, we are gonna have you on in the future in 2023 to really delve into food system changes, food system transition. But in the meantime, before I let you go, if you could just give listeners at home maybe some of the next steps with some of the organizations that you're working with, because I know you're involved in a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 48:20

Absolutely. The Toronto Veg Food Bank, we have a farm now, thanks to our trailblazing and excellent executive director, Matt Noble. Uh, it's a quarter of an acre farm at um Wishing Well Sanctuary. So getting that going, uh the produce going even more. It's been it's been an absolute pleasure to see. Uh, but people can get involved there if they want and reach out to us. Um, also, Matt is working on a new campaign, um, put food banks out of business, which uh is super exciting. And also, we just recently, after we won, uh were awarded a grant from the T Collin Campbell Foundation, started a whole food plant-based community cooking uh class for um some food bank clients and stuff. Uh that's just something to put on people's radars because it brings a huge smile uh to my face and warms my heart. On plant-based data, there's gonna be a lot of focus on labor transition. And I'm happy to talk about this when I come back on because in terms of the supply side and everything I mentioned to you about working at iCanada, really incentivizing people is key. I really encourage that for everybody in general. How to incentivize people to make plant-based transitions easier. So I will be working more looking at programs like Cash for Trash, which incentivizes fishers to get out of the fishing game and towards cleaning up our waters, our oceans. And we'll be updating the library and summaries through plant-based data and looking at there's a World Bank and Food International Food Policy and Research Institute report around subsidies. That's really interesting. I found only a third of subsidy dollars go to farmers themselves, as well as a lot of stuff you and I touched upon a little bit here, um, reports around behavioral change. And though they're definitely going to always be ongoing talks and podcasts, given that I work with Nick and Thuchar. If anybody hasn't checked it out, um Nick has a really good one recently on Simon Hill around dairy being regenerative or not. And Thuchar had an excellent keynote on overconsumption and degrowth uh that he presented at the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. I don't know if that one's publicly available, but I'll find out. And finally, on VegTO and the Veg Climate Network, which is the group I chair uh through VegTO, uh there's an exciting network portal that's in development that our excellent executive director, Kimli Dolivera, has uh incepted and basically created entirely on our own, which will uh be a bit of a social grounds and uh a group-based portal, something that I think some people are looking to get off Facebook or vegans are looking to connect, especially those in Toronto, besides meetup groups. And as I mentioned, we'll also be using these polling results. I'm currently working on press releases out to the media, uh, work with stakeholders like uh health and environmental organizations specifically on trying to get people to pay a little bit more attention to some of the stuff you and I covered today. And finally, um trying to get more plant-based foods in schools, city spaces, maybe get back in touch with city council, and finally uh get corporations, more corporations on board. So it's been a real pleasure speaking with you today, and I look forward to uh part two. Absolutely, me too. Thanks again, Clint.

SPEAKER_00 51:31

This podcast featured royalty-free music from BinSound.com. A very special thanks to our guests for speaking with us and sharing their insights, and of course, thank you for listening. The Plant Based Canada Podcast is an initiative of the group Plant Based Canada, which aims to educate the public and health professionals on the evidence-based benefits of plant-based whole food nutrition for individual and planetary health. To learn more about the show, visit our website www.plantbasedcanada.org and stay up to date by following us on Instagram and Facebook at Plantbased Canada.org and our Plant Based Canada YouTube channel. Also, don't forget to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you download your podcasts.