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How to become (part-time) vegan
Campaigns may not make many ideological converts, but they can be good at facilitating lasting changes in behaviour
Last Saturday was the first day of February, and yet my daughter did not consume any meat, nor other animal products. If this is a puzzling statement to you, let me explain. In 2014, Jane Land and Matthew Glover launched , an annually recurring campaign in the UK, aimed at promoting a vegan lifestyle: eat vegan for a month. This year, my daughter and her husband — both lovers of good food, including meat and seafood — decided to give it a go. And while I didn’t expect them to give up in despair halfway through, I had assumed they would celebrate their achievement by means of an animal protein feast as soon as January was over.
To be fair, my daughter has not quite turned vegan — she has no intention of completely giving up steak, bacon, eggs, fish, prawn or lobster any time soon. Yet somehow, eating vegan for a month seems to have materially changed her behaviour — and that kind of thing piques my interest. What has happened?
Social, timely and easy — a powerful threesome
Veganuary exploits a key lever for behavioural change: it is . When we see other people do something, the threshold for us…
