How do you change the eating habits of a population?

[00:00:00]

Hi, welcome to the Great Charities podcast. Today, I’m here with the precedent of Vigen that 80 Felix Nut and Vegans is a environmental organization that is focused on nutrition topics. So today I’m sure we’re gonna hear things about maybe activism, maybe vegan food. So I’m very excited to dive into this. Felix, how are you doing today?

[00:00:30]

Yeah, I’m doing great. Thank you very much for this conversation we are having.

[00:00:35]

All right. And how did did I describe your organization in a correct way? Would you say?

[00:00:43]

Yeah, the official name of our organization is Big in Society Austria. Translated to chairman, we can top that.

[00:00:52]

He’s our website and we are an environmental charity active mainly in Austria with a focus on nutrition topics.

[00:01:03]

Gotcha. And.

[00:01:07]

So is this something you think that the average European citizen doesn’t know about your call, some big innocent that you would really like for them to understand?

[00:01:19]

Now, that’s a hard question. I believe that the knowledge about nutrition that people have, it’s much bigger than their actions. They. Clark Samper Most people know that production of animal products is linked to bad animal welfare standards. People know nowadays that eating meat in big quantities is bad for the rainforest and for environment and for the climate. But still, they continue eating a lot of animal products. And our focus is not the main focus is on education, but the main focus is on showing alternatives. People could easily adopt. We want to help people to adapt a sustainable lifestyle, to discover plant based alternatives to animal products without having the problem that it’s difficult to maintain. That’s our strategy.

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I see. And from your experience, would you say that the biggest bottleneck that is holding people back from making this change is is it money? Is it taste? Is it knowledge? What do you say is missing?

[00:02:39]

I mean, that’s probably a lot of factors. You have to take into account. There are a lot of models who describe that people mainly do that what they are used to do. People are having cultural and sociologically habits in terms of plant-based food. I would say nowadays because of subsidies, for example, or because of taxation in Australia, if you buy old milk or soy milk, the taxation is 20 percent, they be 80. And if you buy cow milk, it’s 10 percent. So sometimes because of subsidies and taxation’s animal products are cheaper as they should be on the market. But on the other hand, you have a lot of habits. People like to eat and drink the same products that you stole from the childhood. And then there is also the pro the problem of a whale ability and some that of often it comes down to the point when people want to switch in their diet, but they don’t know any recipes and they don’t know how to get it and where they can buy the product. And that’s what we try to do as we help to discover restaurants. We help the people to find new products in the supermarkets, to find the products in an easy way. And we support them with recipes and we support them with role models. And we show them that they are not alone so they could adapt their diet easily if they are interested.

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I think that is a very important job to do. So put Europe. Would you think it’s the most important that you introduce people to new brands that are more vegan, or do you think you can show them versions of their old brands that are now weakened instead? Did a question make sense?

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It makes sense. I would say probably we do both.

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So when you look back 15 years ago, the only alternative was to show them new brands.

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But nowadays you’ll see that a lot of your kind of meat producers or dairy producers or McDonalds speak supermarket change at big supermarket chains have new products in a plant-based way.

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And a lot of. Pieper They do. What’s the most comfortable for them to do it in their daily life? And so for sure, it would be, from a moral perspective, better to support a hundred percent sustainable small startups all the time. But for a lot of people who buy our products in that discount or in the supermarket, these products are not the way.

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And so we try to promote both versions.

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I see. And why do you think it’s there’s less tax on the animal products?

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Because if you made it sheep person alternative, you would have more people switching. And I guess you would also have these big companies being have more of an incentive to make plant based versions of the products they already have. Why do you think that is happening?

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I think it’s. It has historical reasons in Austria. I the taxations got into effect after the war and back then there was no soy milk or no milk or no plant based alternatives.

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And there was also not really the knowledge about the problems of dairy products.

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And the government wanted to support their regional and local farmers to be independent of imports. And so they made some taxation laws for it, especially milk and meat and other products which are very strong in Austria traditionally. And then times were changing, but especially the Conservative Party, which is very big and

important in Austria. They are very have good connections to the farmers and they all share milk farmers and Austrian meat farmers. They have no interest in changing that taxation. So nowadays it’s maintained because they do successful lobbying, but it was introduced because of historical reasons to get, I don’t know, self-sufficient from other countries. After the war.

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I see. So a lot of what you are fighting against is just people wanting to stay the same law, staying the same people being in habits. What is emotion in one way stays in motion. So then what is your approach then to changes to take things in a new direction? Is it activism? Is it role models? Is it inspiration?

[00:07:44]

What’s the most powerful tool in a moment? We are living in a very good and positive times. Concerning that topic in Austria. It is a hundred percent true that the establishment or the lobby groups of the farmers want to maintain everything the same. But on the other hand, in Austria we have one percent of the people live in our plant-based lifestyle. We have additionally 9 percent to 10 percent of people who live a vegetarian. And we know from surveys that more than 52 percent want to reduce their meat intake. And yes, you also see that already on the market, that in the supermarkets, the shelves with the plant-based alternatives get bigger and bigger and bigger. And the supermarkets tell us that 90 to 80 percent of these products are bought by meat eaters. We see, for example, our meat companies getting nervous and making new drinks. We are there. They mix old milk with a cow milk and then they write old, very small and very big milk on it to confuse consumers.

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And we also see that in the media, in the discussions you have in the public media, the plant based alternatives are much more accepted nowadays. And you have films like Game Changers, which do people know and laugh and changed a lot.

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So that means there is some dynamic in the horse situation and we try to support these people who want to switch to a plant based diet as good as possible. And we do that by, for example, organizing fairs, organizing Streitfeld festivals so that people could get to know alternatives.

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We do that by introducing a vegetarian and vegan labor to supermarkets so that people could find the products more easier, the supermarkets, if there are more alternatives. We do that by working together with schools, teaching people who are in the tourism or gastronomy school how to cook plant-based. We are in contact with catering companies and and restaurant chains and we do service with them and want to motivate them to increase their offer. So that’s our strategy is we have.

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So it seems like you’re very much standing for vegan organisms and wants to show the positive sides of it and how it can make food tastes delicious compared to being more of an activist group in the Ratajczak do now.

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We worked with activists costs. On the one hand, activists share our content in social media and in the environment or so in our street food festivals and. Fair thee rely very much on activists. And also we come from an activist perspective because 10 years ago we didn’t have any employees and we all were activists out as we get some money paid. But I mean, it’s that the salary is not very high, but we still feel as activists, but it’s still we we try to work together with the economy and with businesses. And for sure, we also to education. For example, if there is some media inquiry, we talk about the reasons for a plant based diet and for veganism. But our main focus is to show alternatives and make the vegan life easier.

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I see.

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And what would you say is the biggest success of your organization so far?

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Are it’s it’s always hard to tell what the effect of that is exactly, because if you take the figures and you look at the number of vegetarians and Flexitarian and Reagen and the public perception of veganism in the last 15 years, how it developed then probably you could say that was also an outcome of our back.

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But we don’t want to take all the credit because also role models and international examples played a role for sure.

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But if you take a single project, for example, we have in 15 tourism and gastronomy schools in Austria. Teachers who teach cooking had been educated in theory and in practice. And now are teaching their pupils in a so-called Phifer or on frumpy English, you won’t get some kind of extra curriculum you can take in the afternoon, how to cook begin. It’s called vegetarian, but it’s hundred percent plant-based.

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And these are the future cooks and the future hotel managers of Austria who after this school go to their parents hotel and some will be Manchester.

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So that’s one example, which is quite impressive because we started developing a curriculum, we started developing teaching materials, we got in contact with schools and with administration in the economic sector. And now everything is financed by this state because the teacher trainings, which takes one week, is financed by the states and the teacher who teach to begin cooking in the schools and use our materials are getting paid by the state as well.

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That was one example here where I believe that we did very effective there. Must we? We initiated something which now cannot be stopped anymore.

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I can’t really see how that can have a trickle down effect into so many parts of society. You have these future kooks going out to restaurants and now they choose a more plant food plant based menu in that restaurant. People go there and eat. Oh, wow, this was tasty. I want to try to cook this at home. And then you can have a big change that way now. So if we’re looking forward, then what would you wish that your organization accomplished in the years to come?

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Now, one topic we are working on is the inequality in taxation and subsidies. There was a study by it, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration.

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About 62 percent of all the subsidies in the agricultural sector. Are received by meat or dairy farmers. That has to be changed in Austria. Also the taxation topic I talked about earlier and now it is in Austria.

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We have a conservative and green government and we are hoping that perhaps with this new government we have a higher chance, for example, to get rid of these inequalities in the taxation systems as we are in contact with politicians here. And we don’t know if we can do it. But our strategy is to always talk about it in the media and create some pressure, because even if you like eating meat, you cannot really think that that’s fair.

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This taxation. So like must be a topic which we could kind of win on politically ever.

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I I agree totally. I dream of a world where you would have a taxation that is not only fair, but also you would add tax on foodstuff that is negatively impacting your health that society then would have to pay for. So in Sweden, there is much higher tax now on cigarettes, for example. I wish that could happen on. That’s definitely the case. Yeah, I wish that could happen on processed meat and sugar and use that money to then subsidize vegetables. I would love a society where people get free vegetables.

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Now, that’s that’s exactly what we also dream about. Yeah. So we tried to continue our work.

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We want to reach out to more pure building tourism and gastronomy schools. We want to reach out to more schools after or we want to reach out to more producers, to more restaurants.

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We started a project in a moment with bakery chains and business canteens or restaurants. We are the employees of big employers. Eat. And the next thing we will do is through the restaurants, change it itself and then we want to contact the hospitals, etc.. That means there are some good examples of that we do. But we want to spread it to all sectors to die in Australia. And we do not only want to improve the food in bakery chains and the food offering bakery transport, also in hospitals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

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There is some work to do and I think we found kind of effective ways to address these topics, but we just want to continue to work and strive more.

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So you’re really changing the industry from the inside and to businesses and restaurants.

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And apart from this, we have a Facebook channel with 50000 fans. We have a newsletter with 30000 recipients. We have a website with two thousand five hundred visits per day. That means we do education to consumers.

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Anyway, we have two people who just work on creating content for consumers. We have also something like January, but it’s called the week and month. You can. You can order e-mails for one month and then you’ll get emails every day with recipes, tips, etc.. So that means we have we have a range of communication activities to reach out to consulates as well.

[00:18:28]

But rucking refer to the restaurants and the companies. It’s also a big part of Harbach.

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Man, I’m excited. I’m gonna go to your Web site and get some new recipes. So let’s say someone is listening to this now day. Believe in the idea of veganism. They’re excited about your work. They believe in the way you’re approaching this challenge. What can they do to somehow help out and support your cause?

[00:18:53]

It depends if they are located in Austria. Then we are very happy.

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If these people would check out our website, share some content. Visit our events. We have we have 10 big events in Austria every year. Get in contact with us. Perhaps helping us as activists.

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If the people are not in Austria, sharing the content doesn’t make so much sense. Probably then for sure. If if the people are active themselves, they can contact us and ask us about our projects and we are very motivated to share information with them. But for sure, our outback also needs some funding. So that means if if people like our back in our approach, we have. We are also happy about donations because without the money, we couldn’t get bigger and we couldn’t also continue our work because every every lack of quality also requires some funding. And it’s it’s true that we are located in Austria, which is not a country with a very low level of salaries.

[00:20:09]

But on the other hand, we are or very idealistic and therefore we have very low salaries anyway. So you’ll get much for every euro glutamate.

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So you listening? I encourage you to go to vegan dot 80 and get engaged and make a donation. And thank you, Felix, for coming on the great Chodas podcast. It was great talking with you.

[00:20:32]

Thank you, e-mails. It was a pleasure for me.

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Bye bye. Bye bye.