A new year often comes with new clothes, a new hairstyle, and maybe even a new gym membership (that you may or may not actually use). But now—more than ever before—it also comes with new vegan food! The vegan market is exploding with terrific new products, improving on and replacing ones that you swore couldn’t possibly get any better. Here are five new vegan foods, which will undoubtedly change the game for cruelty-free eating, to look forward to finding on shelves in 2021:
Beyond Meat’s New Burgers
America’s favorite vegan burger company is coming out with two new patties to sizzle up in 2021. One of them is designed to taste even meatier than the one we know and love (which already tastes pretty darn meaty), and the other one will be lower in fat. We can’t wait to sink our teeth into these two newcomers knowing that—based on Beyond Meat’s tasty track record—they’ll be fabulous.
McDonald’s McPlant Burger
Speaking of Beyond Meat, the beloved brand partnered with McDonald’s to develop the global food conglomerate’s first stateside vegan burger rollout—the McPlant burger. The fast-food chain plans to launch it in 2021 but hasn’t announced where exactly that will be. Based on all the lines wrapping around buildings and the sold-out items from vegan tests at other fast-food chains, we’re confident that the McPlant will be a hit wherever it’s offered.
It will make it even easier for many Americans to choose vegan, sparing countless cows the horrors of rape racks, feedlots, filthy sheds, transport trucks, and slaughterhouses associated with animal agriculture. Quite soon, there will be no excuses for eating animal-derived foods left to cling to.
Vegan Babybel Cheese
Remember those little wheels of cheese in a coating of red wax that you’d peel off when you were a kid? Well, the vegan version, made by the French company Bel Group, is slated to hit shelves in 2021 and will be followed by a vegan product launch from the company’s brand The Laughing Cow. We can’t wait for these delicious mini wheels of vegan Babybel cheese to roll their way into stores everywhere!
‘Colin Kaepernick’s Non-Dairy Change the Whirled’ Frozen Dessert by Ben & Jerry’s
NFL free agent Colin Kaepernick will now live on forever, in the form of “Colin Kaepernick’s Change the Whirled” vegan ice cream, when the new flavor hits shelves in 2021. Kaepernick isn’t afraid to take a knee stand for what’s right, and that’s why we love him—and why we also love the vegan caramel sunflower butter base ice cream with fudge chips, graham cracker swirls, and chocolate cookie swirls named for him. Wow—we can’t wait!
MorningStar Going 100% Vegan
First, MorningStar Farms made its highly sought-after vegetarian corndogs vegan, and it didn’t stop there—the popular plant-based brand now promises to remove all animal-derived ingredients from its product line by 2021! We’re thrilled, not only because the brand’s new policy will avoid using 300 million eggs annually (which will, in turn, spare many hens horrific suffering) but also because we won’t have to waste time inspecting the labels on MorningStar products before deciding whether to toss them into our carts.
Roughly 300 million hens are exploited for their eggs every year. Shortly after they hatch, the male chicks are killed, often with the likes of a wood chipper, and workers sear off the beaks of female chicks so that they won’t attack each other—once they’re stuffed together inside cramped cages—out of frustration. Egg-free products help eliminate the need for this insane cruelty that humans inflict on hens and their baby brothers in the name of omelets and cupcakes.
Taco Bell Vegan Meat
In other fast-food news that has been a long time coming: Taco Bell’s new CEO, Mark King, announced that vegan meats will be added to the chain’s menu come 2021. We’re not sure which brand Taco Bell will partner with yet, but our fingers are crossed for Beyond Meat!
As multiple huge fast-food chains add vegan meat to their menus and various new and innovative vegan products take over grocery store shelves everywhere, it’s safe to say that the world is going vegan. Soon, animal-derived options will be considered the “alternative” to the clearly superior vegan options—that is, until they become totally unacceptable and obsolete.
