The future of food

Aberdeen had its first ever vegan festival today and we went to check it out. Despite being vegan for more than a decade, this was the first vegan festival I’ve ever been to. I’ve never lived anywhere that had such a thing. It seems ironic that my first vegan festival should be in the home of haggis.

It was held at the most unusual place: the Aberdeen football club’s home, Pittodrie stadium. Perhaps this is not so unusual these days. After all, there is a vegan football team in England and the US has a vegan strip club. When I think of a vegan festival I think of plants and nothing remotely like Pittodrie stadium, which suffers from a dearth of plants and too-much-brick-and-concrete. It’s a very ugly and uninspiring building.

We got there early and, as you can see, there was a long queue out front. How can that be? I thought I was the only vegan in Aberdeen. Daniel was equally perplexed and asked me why there were so many people in a “Why would anyone go to a vegan festival?” tone of voice. It turns out hundreds of people would go. The festival was absolutely packed.

There were lots of stalls selling food but only two lunch-type places and the queues at both were longer than an average vegan’s life expectancy. Then one of them ran out of food and so I think it was much busier than anyone expected, which is terrific, although a bit disappointing for me as I was hungry.

Glasgow-based French chef Laurianne was there with her delicious raw cakes. You will not taste a better cake anywhere else on Earth.

The queue for these delicious-looking pastries was also ridiculously long and so we didn’t try any, unfortunately.

Vegan food products are experiencing enormous sales growth right now and with people like Bill Gates promoting and investing in plant-based foods, it’s only going to become more and more popular. I just want to say I was vegan before all the cool kids were doing it. The following video is from Bill Gates’s site: it explains the science of plant-based proteins and why they’re more sustainable.