With veganism on the rise and entire supermarket aisles now dedicated to veggie and vegan food ranges, it’s a good time to consider what motivates people to go vegan. There are many reasons why people decide to cut animal products from their diet, but the negative health effects of excessive meat and dairy consumption and the enormous environmental impacts of industrial agriculture are popular ones. However, the suffering of billions of animals each year in factory farming, referred to in a 2015 Guardian article as one of the “worst crimes in history”, is the most powerful motivation for many, including myself.

By now, you've likely heard the argument to eat less meat for the health of the planet. Heck, even Beyoncé has been pushing this message, dangling the prospect of free concert tickets for life before fans to raise interest in plant-based eating for the environment. But if you're an omnivore starving while staring at a menu, it can be hard for the future of planet Earth to compete with the appeal of a big, juicy burger.

What if the world’s top leaders, entertainers, doctors, and scientists asked you to go vegan? That’s the hope for a new campaign from the team that brought you Veganuary. Celebrity supporters include Paul McCartney, actor Woody Harrelson, musician Moby, Joaquin Phoenix, Evanna Lynch, and PCRM founder Dr. Neal Barnard.

We know the world is eating too much meat, and we know that we as individuals have to do something about it. So I was one of the record 250,000 people who signed up to Veganuary this year. I haven’t actually eaten meat for 30 years, although I occasionally ate fish and felt bad about it. Two years ago, I visited a modern British dairy farm where the cows were kept in very clean conditions, indoors, all year round.

In a recent tell-all article with Urbanette, Michelle Pfeiffer revealed her secret to looking young: veganism. Yes, she credited her youthful glow to her plant-based diet! She said the light bulb went on when she watched CNN’s The Last Heart Attack. With a family history of cancer, she decided a vegan diet was the healthiest option.

This week, I was sent an enthusiastic email from someone encouraging me, as a vegan, to give the 'Entovegan lifestyle' a go. It was, they promised me, the most sustainable option out there and one that all eco-conscious vegans should consider switching to. Intrigued, I took a look to see if there was some blindly obvious adaptation to my lifestyle I could and should make.‍

The UK is officially the world leader for vegan food launches, according to data from market expert Mintel. When it comes to plant-based eating, Germany has long been ahead of the game with recent reports confirming that 10 per cent of the population describe themselves as vegan or vegetarian, and an impressive one in 10 new products feature a vegan label.

Mexican-inspired fast-food chain Taco Bell will test its first-ever dedicated vegetarian menu in stores later this year. Taco Bell is the only quick service restaurant to certified by the American Vegetarian Association. According to the brand, its current menu allows more than 8 million vegetarian combinations, enough to customize a new meal every day for 20,000 years.

In 2016, a petition launched by the Portugal Vegetarian Society (Associação Vegetariana Portuguesa) gathered over 15,000 signatures, in support of making it mandatory for all public institutions and eateries to serve at least one, if not multiple vegan and vegetarian options. Last year, to the delight of many meat-free eaters, this law was finally legalized and implemented by the Portuguese parliament.

As the hangovers kick in and promises are made at the end of the festive season, more and more people are committing to making a lifestyle change that may require stronger willpower than, say, going to the gym more than once in the first month of the year. Record numbers have signed up to “Veganuary” and will try living on a plant-based diet, at least for a few weeks. With vegan options becoming cheaper, and more widespread and convenient, organisers of the initiative believe 2019 will be the year of the vegan.

In the first half of 2019, the Impossible Burger–the plant-based burger known for its ability to bleed plant-based blood–will be sold in grocery stores for the first time. Good Catch, a startup making fish-free tuna and crab-free cakes, plans to launch in February. And it’s possible that the FDA and USDA will approve the first chicken grown from chicken cells in a bioreactor for sale in restaurants. It means we could be at a tipping point for the post-animal meat industry. Sales of plant-based meat are growing; between August 2017 and August 2018, according to Nielsen data...

Major company BOCA has confirmed that the majority of its products are now vegan, Plant Based News can reveal. The news follows a campaign by vegan advocacy group Compassion Over Killing, which has been working to persuade BOCA to ditch dairy. Nearly 50,000 people have signed COK's petition urging BOCA's parent company, Kraft Heinz, to ditch dairy and several celebs and elite athletes have supported its campaign.

2019 will be the year veganism goes mainstream, according to top news title The Economist. The outlet has published an article titled The year of the vegan, which lists some of the ways the vegan movement is becoming more prevalent in various sectors of society.

Bristol-based vegan group Friends Not Food invited Tulip Slaughterhouse workers to join them for a plant-based Christmas dinner to promote festive peace.

This is a welcome sign of the rising global popularity of veganism – something that was reflected at the start of this year when a whopping 168,500 signed up to our Veganuary pledge, compared to 59,500 the year before and 3,300 in 2014 when it first started. That was just the beginning of a phenomenal year of growth for the vegan movement, as 2018 has seen more and more shops adding vegan ranges, chain restaurants offering vegan menus and the number of Google searches worldwide increasing massively from a popularity score of 17 to 88 in a decade.

There are many types of vegan but a new one is on the rise - the Embarrassed Vegan. These permanently red-faced plant-munchers seem to be ashamed of absolutely everything. An activist appears on television? Embarrassed Vegan thinks he was too aggressive. Someone posts the truth about animal slaughter on social media? Embarrassed Vegan thinks that will just harden people against us. Liberators save some hens' lives? Embarrassed Vegan thinks that gives us all a bad name, actually.

Los Angeles residents may soon be eating more tofu with their entertainment. A proposed city law would require movie theaters, sports stadiums, the Los Angeles Zoo, Los Angeles International Airport restaurants and other large-scale entertainment venues to sell at least one vegan protein option.

The “Missing Pathways to 1.5°C” report is part of a wider body of scientific research connecting the dots between eating animals and our rapidly changing climate. Report co-author and College of the Atlantic professor Doreen Stabinsky, Ph.D., told me that climate scientists are not so much frustrated as “really freaked out” by the inaction of policy makers and the general public, who continue to eat animal-based diets.

A few weeks ago, William Sitwell, the editor of Waitrose Food — a monthly magazine published by a British supermarket chain — decided to leave the mag after an email exchange in which he wrote about hunting and killing vegans went viral. Naturally, this led a lot of people to weigh in on veganism. The general consensus on Twitter seemed to be that vegans do, in fact, suck. Like really suck. Like Hoover-manufactured-a-sex-robot levels of sucking. Because now they made some nice British man lose his job. Those non-flesh eating monsters!

The Canadian government is showing its support for vegan protein once again by signing on to a nearly $153 million investment in the Prairie-based Protein Industries Canada Supercluster. Protein Industries Canada is a nonprofit value chain group of small-to-large institutions involved in food manufacturing, agriculture and food-related services, research and development, and technology; it seeks to make Canada a world leader in the booming plant-based protein market.