Produced by | Tiger Sniff Youth Culture Group
Author | Wooden boy
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"Friends with Aristotle, friends with Plato, and friends with broccoli."
The world's top universities are trying to rewrite the life creed of Ivy League scholars.
It's hard to imagine that when the schoolmasters end a crazy morning and walk into the cafeteria, they will be greeted not by chicken thighs, steaks and pork pie, but with greens, tofu and boiled peas, but this is exactly what Yale, Harvard, and Stanford have done in recent years.
In recent years, a sad trend for carnivores has become increasingly unattractive: meat and fish are disappearing from the menus of the world's top universities.
Entering a prestigious school from thousands of mali may not only mean the best learning resources, but also mean that your excellent brain is about to replace "green energy".
From October 2021, university students in Berlin, Germany, found it more difficult to eat meat at school than to get an A grade point.
At the beginning of this day, new menus in Berlin's university canteens came into effect, and the original rich meat selection was almost completely replaced by green.
Every Tuesday through Thursday, the menu consists of 68% vegan, 28% vegetarian and 4% meat and fish. Monday is even more "cruel", perhaps to let students clear their stomachs from the big fish and meat on the weekend, there is no meat supply throughout the day, and even the curry sausage plate that has remained unchanged for thousands of years is filled with potato salad.
Vegetarian restaurant at the University of Berlin, Germany
Not to mention the common roast pork knuckles in German breweries, Munich white sausages, and even a small Nuremberg sausage, have become luxurious limited products, and Nietzsche and Hegel in the future will probably have to think about God and the universe on the leaves of lettuce.
Also becoming green are the major universities in the United States.
Peta Society for The Good(PETA) has tracked 1,400 four-year colleges and universities across the United States and found that from 189 in 2013 to 709 in 2019, more and more colleges and universities are becoming "vegetarian-friendly campuses."
They build vegetarian restaurants, slash the animal sources on their menus, let fruits and vegetables occupy the plates, and most unfortunately sell vegan sandwiches or cookies in cafes.
PETA rated A for the vegetarian-friendly campus
Every popularity of young culture cannot escape the top-down diffusion path.
In this campus "greening" wind, the major schools have lived up to expectations.
Comparing peta-friendly campuses with the map of famous universities in the United States, it is not difficult to find that the ranking of colleges and universities is highly correlated with the degree of vegetarian friendliness.
The East Coast, where famous schools converge, is full of green fields, while the Midwest, where education is relatively poor, still has a large blank space.
Map of elite schools in the United States
Even in takeaway orders, elite school students showed more interest in vegetarian food than regular schools.
A report on student takeout orders by food delivery site Grubhub shows that Yale students order vegetarian and vegan dishes 130 percent more often than students at other schools, 86 percent more frequently at Harvard and more than 79 percent more at Wiss.
On the list, the ivy schools' food habits are as green as their names.
Giving full play to academic expertise, major schools have given many more "scientific" names to vegetarians.
Stanford calls vegetarianism a "sustainable menu."
According to R&DE, the company that manages the Stanford cafeteria, 80% of the main course of the "sustainability menu" is vegetarian food that follows the principle of food nutrition collocation, and 50% is vegan without animal sources.
In the side dishes, each meal is accompanied by a chef's special vegetable and a steamed vegetable, ensuring that each snack has a vegetarian option.
Introduction to the dishes of the Stanford canteen
Among the semi-meat dishes with meat and vegetarian food, the proportion of vegetables will not be less than 30%.
The same philosophy, at Yale, is known as the "plant-forward diet."
Rafi Taherian, executive president and chef of Yale University's Food and Beverage Management, explained in a video that vegetables, fruits, vegetables, fruits, starchy plant-based foods are the most important, and meat is also available, but it is more like a condiment than the focus of the dish.
Schematic diagram of the ingredients of the "Plant-First Diet"
Back in 2016, Yale began experimenting with vegetarian butter, vegan mayonnaise, and plant-based milk.
More than 84 percent of yale food today is plant-based, with vegan and vegan options at every meal.
Of the more than 14,000 meals produced every day, chefs struggle to make vegetarian dishes taste a little better. They mixed pasta with white bean paste imitating classic French sauces, smeared barbecue sauce on thickly cut acorn pumpkin to imitate ribs, and "faked" salami with beets.
The most classic mushroom burger, replacing minced beef with juicy mushrooms, is directly breaking the circle and setting off a mushroom burger roll boom in global burger shops.
Mushroom burger
The University of Cambridge, where public chefs are trained in vegetarian craft, Oxford University, where 70% of the menu consists of vegetarian food, Harvard University, which distributes vegetarian recipes to teachers and students every year... Almost all of the world's top universities on the QS list are trying to feed the most efficient brains in human academia with "green sustainable energy".
Don't think that the vegetarianization of campus canteens is to reduce operating costs.
Vegetables are no cheaper than chicken, duck and fish.
Especially if you want to fill your stomach with a purely plant-based diet.
Simply calculate the account according to the online price of Walmart in the United States. A pound of beef shoulder meat costs $6.78, which gives you 568 kcal, while a pound of fresh cauliflower for $3.46 can only bring 90.8 kcal of energy.
Of course, in real life, no one will rely solely on cauliflower to dry up, but this simple economic account tells us that a plant-based diet containing a large number of vegetables and fruits is not high in terms of calorie cost performance.
"Cauliflower rice" sold in supermarkets
Yale's Taherian found that a mushroom burger that replaces a meatloaf with mushrooms costs slightly less than a beef burger, but it becomes a more expensive party than a cheap turkey burger.
Some colleges and universities acknowledge that the shift from traditional to vegetarian menus has led to an increase in canteen operating costs.
Vegetarian food is not cheap and not necessarily healthy.
There have been many studies in recent years that have confirmed the multiple positive effects of vegetarianism.
For example, the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom analyzed 177723 healthy subjects aged 37-73 years in the UK Biobank and found that overall, strict vegetarians were healthier with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer-related biomarkers. This means that vegans may be less affected by the risk of such diseases than the average person.
But there are also studies that point out that veganism may pose other problems.
Due to the lack of vitamin D, vitamin B6, B12, lysine, leucine, and omega-3 fatty acids provided by meat, vegans have poorer bone status and a 20% higher risk of stroke than non-vegetarians.
Moreover, in order to adjust the taste of the public, the high-salt, high-sugar and high-calorie "junk vegetarian food" that is now full of flowers is also not related to health.
At the end of the day, what makes vegetarian food popular in college cafeterias is neither cheap nor healthy, but another reason that is somewhat unexpected.
But before discussing this reason, let's first clarify a premise:
The school's increase in vegetarian menus is not to confront poor students, but to "conform to public opinion".
College students are increasingly enthusiastic about vegetarian food, far more than adults pay attention to.
The number of vegetarian students at U.S. universities has more than doubled over the past 10 years, with a college Pulse survey conducted in 2020 showing 14 percent of college vegetarians, compared to just 4 percent of U.S. adults. And nearly 30% of the remaining 80% of carnivorous students are trying to reduce meat intake.
There are many college vegetarian recipes on the market
What is it that makes a once fleshless young man prefer to endure love and become a herbivore?
Nearly half of the respondents to the College Pulse survey answered:
"For the sake of the environment."
This reason was said two years ago, which inevitably led to ridicule - instead of controlling the emissions of industry, buildings, and transportation, but demanding people's belly, wouldn't it be "Virgin"?
Satire of vegetarians' "Atlas of Human Consumption"
But recently, more and more data points in one direction: reducing meat consumption and driving downsizing the livestock industry may really bring significant changes to the environment.
According to UN Environment's Cool Food Pledge, food production accounts for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and has a significant impact on climate change. Animal food production accounts for two-thirds of all agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.
Compared to soybeans and beef, beef consumes 20 times more land and emits 20 times more greenhouse gases than beans per gram of protein produced.
If the status quo is maintained, even if the world clears all greenhouse gas emissions other than food production, it will not be possible to control the rate of temperature rise to meet the 1.5°C target set in the Paris Agreement.
But if we adjust the diet and reduce the per capita animal diet intake, then we will have a 50% chance of achieving the 1.5°C target.
Gen Z speaks of environmental protection, which is much more serious than Gen Y.
To say that Generation Y is still a bit unconcerned, Generation Z has already tasted the consequences of climate change in the middle of the year: volcanoes, wildfires, epidemics, hurricanes, cold currents... The end of the environment is no longer a paper of horror prophecy, but the edifice of the lifetime will fall.
It's not so much that being vegetarian is saving the planet as it is about saving Gen Z.
Association for the Promotion of Vegetarian Food in American Universities
And the famous school students who have obtained the best educational resources of the same generation feel more "responsible".
In his 2021 Yale University admissions speech, Chancellor Peter Salovey asked a question:
"When the whole world is in the sea of fire, what is the point of your deep study?"
He then replied, in the words of a Jewish rabbi of the Musar movement in the 19th century:
"In the beginning, I wanted to change the world, but I failed. I decided to narrow down my dreams and try to influence the Jewish community in Poland, but there, too, I failed. Later, I focused on my hometown of Reading, and I didn't have much success. I decided to put all my energy into changing my family again, or failed. In the end, I finally made up my mind to change myself, which has had such an impact on the world. ”
The way to change the world is to change yourself first.
Harvard plans to achieve a commitment to reduce food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2030 by focusing on plant-based foods.
Cambridge compared catering carbon emissions data for the same quarter in 2018 and 2015 found that after the implementation of plant-based diets, the average kilogram of food purchased will reduce carbon emissions by 33% and land occupation by 28% compared with the original.
Stanford said it will gradually re-educate more students and their families about plant-based foods, thereby changing the diet of North Americans who rely too much on dairy and meat.
The EAT-Lancet Dietary Pattern Survey shows that the diet of North Americans is very uneven (from left: starchy vegetables, animal protein, dairy products, vegetables, whole grains, fruits, plant proteins)
In the face of environmental issues, the world's great universities are trying to send a signal in a more moderate way of protesting : marches on dinner plates.
As many people as they like vegetarian food, as many people hate vegetarian food.
In 2020, on the Peking University BBS, a post advocating the restoration of the "Peking University Vegetarian Association" was just issued, and it immediately ushered in a wave of opposition.
There is a "congratulatory message" from the "Meat Association".
There are also criticisms against vegetarians hugging.
The poster, Jean Lee, told me that "vegetarianism" is still a niche culture in the domestic college circle.
According to UCVA data as of 2018, almost every of the more than 2,800 colleges and universities in the country has an environmental club, but only 49 have established vegetarian associations, less than 2% of the total.
Number of university vegetarian associations丨 University Vegetarian League
But it's not so much vegetarianism that people hate as it is vegetarianism.
In 2018, the Tsinghua Su Association released a poster on Mother's Day featuring a licking cow titled "She's Also a Mother."
The original meaning is to arouse people's attention to animal rights, but it has caused a lot of controversy. Some netizens posted a mosquito blood-sucking chart in response: "Coincidentally, she is also a mother." ”
Non-vegetarians resist vegetarians like vigilant missionary aunts who are blocking your door and trying to spread the gospel head-on.
When vegetarian food is added to "isms", the original "healthy vegetarian food" and "environmentally friendly vegetarian food" have changed their taste and become "moral vegetarian food", which makes people feel stressed.
Under the dual moral appeal of religion and animal protection, vegetarians have become increasingly strict in their definition of vegetarianism:
At first, you can be a Flexitarian, on a plant-based diet, with two bites of meat when you're occasionally hungry.
Later, you can be a vegetarian, and meat can't be eaten, but animal-derived foods like custard don't get in the way.
Later, you'll need to become vegan, because milking raw eggs can also cause pain and harm to livestock.
Next, you need to start paying attention to whether the frying pan that produces french fries for you has just fried fish cakes and meatloafs, which may contaminate your clean vegetarian diet with animal protein.
In the end, you will become a Fruitarianism and only eat the fruits that naturally fall from the plant, because this will avoid killing the plant and bringing suffering to the plant.
A vegetarian
Ethical vegetarianism is like an endless inward spiral of compassion, turning a dietary problem that was originally a personal choice into a group of homologous pressures.
JeanLee told me that although her friends around her respect her vegetarian habits, she sometimes inadvertently shows some nervousness.
After one school break, JeanLee said that she had other arrangements after class and could not have lunch with her classmates, and the students immediately felt a sense of relief in their tone, excitedly announcing to the students in front of them: "Hey, JeanLee said she is not eating together!" ”
Overly persistent vegetarians are like the westerly wind that tries to strip pedestrians of their clothes with the cold, blowing more and making people wrap their cotton clothes tighter.
An IG influencer who returned to meat due to physical reasons was accused of "betrayal" by fans
No wonder Yale and Stanford want to change the name of "vegetarian food", calling it "plant-first diet" and "sustainable menu".
I am afraid that only by first cutting off the "isms" will it be possible for us to calmly re-examine the meaning of vegetarianism.
To further show that "de-meatization" is not motivated by ethical considerations, these schools are looking for more sustainable superfoods in addition to promoting plant-based diets.
Crickets, for example, a "energy-efficient" food that requires only one-third of water and one-half of feed than tomato cultivation, can produce 22% more protein than beef jerky.
Now, biscuits and bread made from cricket flour have appeared in many university cafes.
Schematic diagram of nutrition and energy consumption of crickets 丨IxFoods
College canteens are not extravagant, and students step by step from the meat world to the green world. They know that there is nothing ism that is enough to make us give up delicious fried chicken.
A survey of 11,399 adults by the Humane Research Council and Harris Interactive found that 84 percent of vegetarians return to meat, with more than half of them occurring within the first year. A third gave up in less than three months.
Like the ketogenic diet, or other healthy weight loss recipes, very few people can survive the three-minute heat and really stick to the vegan diet to the end.
But subtly, is it feasible to make our dietary structure a little greener and greener?
In the near future, the canteen's revenue statement may give the answer to this large-scale human experiment.
Resources:
1.Nature Portfolio: How to eat it to be healthy and good for the earth?
2. Curiosity Daily: The world's first insect bread came out of the oven, and the cricket flour used is not new
3.PETA：Vegan Options Skyrocket on College Campuses
4.VegNews：IVY leagues order more veg food than other schools
5.Harvard：Harvard University dining service
6.Harvard：Six-legged superfood
7.Harvard is going vegan to save the planet
8.YaleNews：What is a plant-forward diet?
9.Stanford：Food Choice Architecture Playbook New