In 2000, I predicted that we would have a predominate vegan world by 2050. It is now 11 years later and I still believe that we will see it within 39 more years. If we look at 1972 which was 39 years ago you will see what I mean. Of course we did not have an Internet or even emails back then. I had been a vegetarian for five years and was taking a college course in nutrition which was a biology requirement. I fought for the course since as an ethical vegetarian I refused to take a normal biology course that required me to cut up animals. Even when they said they would allow me to skip the dissecting of animals I still refused. It came down to the college eliminating the biology requirement for those with moral issues or I would just not graduate. We finally came up with a compromise.
They would establish a nutrition biology course for our biology requirement. I was in their first class and it had to move from a classroom into the auditorium. It was the most attended course that the college ever had. The professor tried to say that vegetarians did not live health lives and what she called "strict vegetarians" (vegans) could not live a healthy life. If they would not balance their intake of proteins they would die. Since I was an ethical vegetarian I saw no reason not to eat eggs or dairy. I lived in Lincoln, Kansas from about six months old to about nine years old and many of my family were farmers. The cows and chickens seemed to be raised humanly. I just did not know the real story. It was not until "Veggies Unite!", the first vegetarian web site on the new Internet, did I learn the real truth.
Anyway, 39 years ago I had to educate the professor about vegetarianism. Because of me arguing in class and outside of class she changed her view of both vegetarianism and veganism. She was still against both but at least she no longer cut us down like she did at the beginning of the course. The course has spread all over the USA and now veg'ns no longer have to cut up animals. It was hard to find much on vegetarianism and almost nothing on veganism. The word vegan was almost universally unknown and vegans were very rare. Here we are 39 years later and almost everyone knows about veganism. We now have vegan options at almost every restaurant. True they may not be completely vegan but at least they are trying. Supermarkets have a good selection of veggie milks lead by Silk. They have Amy products and a good selection of veg'n imitation meats. We are growing in numbers all over the world. 39 years ago vegetarians (including vegans) were about 1% of the population in the USA. Today we are about 7% of our population. That is a tremendous growth. Even if our growth was only linear, that would be 42% of the USA population being vegetarian based on the last 39 years. Since our growth has not been linear, it will still not be linear. There is an economic principal of the "S" curve. Trends start very slow on the bottom of the curve until the foot of the curve is reached. Then the growth starts to accelerate until the knee of the curve is reached. By then the vast majority of the population will have changed with only some die hard people holding out. I believe that our growth pattern shows that we have already passed the foot of the curve and now we will be increasing at an exponential rate. I believe that the Internet is a huge part of that growth. I still believe that we will have a predominately vegan world by 2050.
Insert date: 2011-08-28 Last update: 2016-02-11
