Introduction

January 1

By Alice Shopland, founder of Angel Food

I’m marking Veganuary 2025 by publishing a blog post a day.

I’ve saved more than 1600 animals since 2004, and I’ll probably save at least another 2000 before I die.[1] How? By becoming vegan.

It was easy – I just prioritised my heart and my head over my tastebuds. Although I “gave up” meat and other animal products, it never felt like a sacrifice to me: going vegan was surprisingly easy and deeply effective. As well as farmed animals, I’m saving land, water, greenhouse gas emissions and wild animals.

Alice Shopland, founder of Angel Food, Aotearoa New Zealand’s original vegan cheese company.

It was also fast – my opinion pivoted from “Vegans are weird, attention-seeking extremists” to “Everybody should go vegan, it’s amazing!” within six weeks, and within a year I had started the business which would become New Zealand’s first vegan cheese brand.

I was painfully shy and slightly weird, so taking on the powerful dairy industry of Aotearoa New Zealand was perhaps a strange choice. But I think that the little weirdo I was back then would be proud of what we’ve achieved.

From the moment I became vegan, I felt a responsibility to lower the barriers for others to do the same. It has always felt urgent to me: lives are literally at stake.

Twenty years on it feels even more urgent. We need action on human-induced climate change and we cannot wait for high-tech solutions, corporations or governments. Shifting away from animal products is a powerful individual action that most people can take almost immediately, so why wouldn’t we? We also need a kinder, more compassionate world, and veganism delivers that too.

I started my vegan food business with cheese because a lot of people believe they can’t live without it and this is becomes a barrier to plant-based eating. I used to be an avid consumer of dairy cheese, so I understand its allure. I didn’t know that cheese is one of the most challenging animal products to recreate without animal ingredients – but that wouldn’t have put me off anyway, because cheese is too important. It is delicious, rich and satisfying, mildly addictive, and a key ingredient in many favourite meals. But its industrial-scale production is an environmental nightmare and cannot happen without systematic animal abuse.

Food is fascinating. It is deeply entwined with our culture and our personal identities, which can make change difficult. But it’s also an area where big positive change can happen quickly for animals and the environment. And we can achieve all of that without giving up our favourite meals.

[1] Assuming I live to be 85. Calculated at www.vegansociety.com/sites/default/apps/veganalyser/