This week -- an 11-year-old entrepreneur and chef
opens a vegan restaurant in the UK.
A luxury Caribbean resort restaurant goes completely vegan.
Virgin Holidays officially cuts ties with SeaWorld.
And Nestlé plans to launch vegan bacon, chicken, and sausage.
All that and more on LIVEKINDLY’s weekly vegan news.
11-year-old entrepreneur Omari McQueen is the youngest award-winning vegan chef in the UK.
"Welcome to Top Tip Tuesday.
Today I'll be telling you guys about the benefits of courgette.
Courgette is also known as zucchini."
This summer, he’ll open Dipalicious, a plant-based Caribbean pop-up restaurant at Boxpark Croydon.
McQueen isn’t just a restaurateur -- he’s the founder and CEO of Dipalicious,
a brand that makes dips, juices, and snacks.
The young businessman learned how to cook for his mother at age 7, when she fell ill.
He soon came across a PETA video and decided to go vegan.
He created the first Dipalicious dip for a vegan pizza he made on his YouTube channel.
"Our pizza's ready for the oven. My mum's going to put that in for 20 minutes."
The Caribbean-flavored dip was a hit with friends and family, which inspired him to launch his own business.
He also began saving up for his own restaurant.
In addition to running his company and restaurant, McQueen hosts vegan cooking workshops for kids out of his home.
He hopes to inspire a passion for plant-based food in other children.
The young entrepreneur’s accomplishments have already been recognized a number of times.
Host: "Well done for these awards you've won already.
What do you love most about cooking?"
McQueen: "That people get to taste my food and they say it's delicious."
In 2018, he won the TruLittle Hero Award for being the Entrepreneur Hero under 12 by Cause4Children Ltd.
He won the Compassionate Kid Award from PETA for his work helping animals last November.
He also won the Proud & Gifted Award for his work as a vegan chef and youth empowerment speaker.
Supermarkets are gearing up for a plant-powered Christmas season.
Asda, the UK’s second-largest supermarket chain, gave a sneak preview of its upcoming festive range.
The centerpiece is a vegan wellington.
While traditional wellingtons consist of fillet steak coated in pate, wrapped in parma ham and puff pastry,
Asda’s meatless version features a blend of chickpea, cranberries, and apricots mixed with spices and cranberry sauce in a golden, dairy-free puff pastry.
That’s not all that’s on the Christmas meu --
customers will have sides like vegan pork sausages and cranberry-apple stuffing balls to choose from.
And for dessert, a gold and chocolate swirl that Asda says “nobody will be able to resist.”
The ring-shaped dessert features dairy-free caramel sauce and chocolate mousse with an outer Belgian chocolate shell decorated with gold lustre.
Asda’s not the only supermarket to preview its Christmas menu --
Tesco recently gave a sneak peak of its holiday menu as well.
Its new range features pigs in duvets, a Butternut Squash, Mushroom, and Chestnut Wreath,
a Stuffed Butternut, and a Sweet Potato & Red Cabbage Christmas Log.
For dessert, there’s vegan Chocolate Torte and dairy-free ice cream.
COMING UP -- Virgin Holidays cuts ties with SeaWorld and other marine parks
that exhibit captive dolphins and whales
Luxury resorts are going vegan. Anse Chastanet, a luxury Caribbean resort on the island nation of St. Lucia,
switched one of its restaurants to a completely vegan menu.
The restaurant, named Emerald, previously served vegetarian food.
But now, it’s ditched the eggs and dairy for good.
The resort’s executive director Karolin Troubetzkoy said:
“We saw an increasing demand for vegan meals from our guests, so we thought why not develop this concept
and make it part of our dining experience.”
The new menu was developed by James Beard Award winning chef Allen Susser
and the resort’s vegan chef, Frank Faucher.
Faucher: "I've been working with Anse Chastanet for the past 21 years.
What I do love the most about my job is cooking,
and um, sharing my experience with my team."
Some of the dishes include Bread Fruit Gnocchi,
St Lucian Mango Chutney, and Crispy Cauliflower Accras,
all of which feature organic produce grown on local farms just 20 minutes away.
Guests can also attend on-site farm-to-table cooking classes
using freshly harvested fruits and vegetables.
Emerald is the resort’s only fully vegan establishment, but all restaurants have options thanks to customer demand.
Virgin Holidays is officially done with SeaWorld.
The Richard Branson-led travel giant will no longer sell tickets to parks featuring captive dolphins and whales,
including SeaWorld, Discovery Cove, and similar attractions.
The move will see more than 20,000 tickets to marine parks being removed from sale annually.
A spokesperson for Virgin said that the decision is “the right thing to do.”
It’s part of Virgin’s ongoing effort to stop promoting marine captivity.
Over the past year, the company has cut ties with 19 attractions featuring captive dolphins and whales.
The 2013 documentary “Blackfish” revealed the dark side of marine parks.
Orcas are sentient, social animals that can travel up to 143 miles a day in the wild.
Their tanks in captivity are like the equivalent of a bath tub.
Captive orcas are known to spend their days swimming in circles and exhibit destructive behaviors such as chewing on concrete siding
or getting into fights with other whales they don’t get along with, but are forced to live in tight quarters with.
The average lifespan for orcas is 30 to 40 years old,
but the average age of death for SeaWorld orcas is 14 years old, according to PETA.
"Today animal rights groups were quick to point out that
some orcas live upwards of 80 years in the wild.
PETA tweeted that Kayla never got to swim in the ocean,
was forced to move around the country from park to park,
and heartbreakingly lost babies over the years, PETA wrote."
Recent consumer research by the travel firm revealed that 92 percent of British travelers would prefer to see animals in the wild.
Instead of offering tickets to marine parks,
Virgin Holidays plans to refocus its efforts on promoting ethical wild animal attractions as well as marine conservation.
Last year, founder Richard Branson donated $300,000 to build a dolphin sanctuary in Baltimore.
Branson’s conservation efforts were inspired by films like 2009’s the Cove that questions dolphin hunting practices in Japan,
and 2006’s Sharkwater that revealed the horrors of the corrupt shark fin industry.
The latter was directed by late Canadian filmmaker Rob Stewart, who died tragically in 2017,
in a scuba diving accident while filming Sharkwater Extinction.
Branson: "...ever since then, I've used myself, my blog, my social media
to get out there and campaign against issues around the world that I think are wrong and
which are going to affect species adversely."
American airline giant United Airlines also announced it would cut ties with Seaworld,
dropping all recommendations from its website
over animal cruelty claims at the marine park.
COMING UP - the vegan meat market is set to be worth a staggering $85 billion by 2030.
Nestlé, the world’s largest food group, is taking on the meat industry.
The food giant plans to make vegan bacon, chicken, and sausage to keep up with the public’s changing meat preferences.
CEO Mark Schneider said that giving consumers what they want will be an ongoing trend.
And what do they want? Plants.
People around the world are ditching animal products for the good of the planet, their health, and animal welfare
and opting for vegan protein and dairy products.
A recent survey of the U.S. showed that 114 million are cutting back on animal products this year for health reasons.
Nestlé launched the realistic Incredible Burger in Europe earlier this year, which is already on the menu of McDonald’s in Germany.
It will launch a similar burger stateside called the Awesome Burger under its Sweet Earth brand.
Wayne England, Nestlé’s head of food business, said the rising interest in veganism isn’t a “passing trend,” but is here to stay.
The global vegan meat market could be worth $85 billion by 2030.
A recent report by multinational investment bank UBS Group AG revealed that the category is set to skyrocket.
Previous analyses predicted that the plant-based protein market may be worth $41 billion in the next decade.
Vegan meat has become increasingly mainstream over the past year.
Southern California’s Beyond Meat launched one of the most successful first-day IPOs in nearly two decades.
and its best-selling Beyond Burger is available at an ever-increasing list of national restaurant chains.
“Mock meat was an almost comical fad 20 years ago,” said Wayne Gordon —
a senior Asia-Pacific strategist at UBS Global Wealth Management.
“It’s no laughing matter today, given the industry’s meteoric rise in recent years.”
That’s it for today. How do you feel about Nestle making vegan meat? Let us know in the comments.
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