ANDY BERLINER
Co-Founder of Amy's
Twenty-five years ago, as a consequence of my herbal tea company, Magic Mountain Teas, I was traveling a lot. It was very difficult to find vegetarian food. Generally, you could order a baked potato and a salad or find a place that had a salad bar. When you ate with business people at that time and you were a vegetarian, it was considered very odd. The perception of vegetarians was that they were hippies or health nuts. It was not a concept that was understandable to people.
But I did learn what it was like to be vegetarian on the road, which was quite different from being vegetarian at home. I would pack peanut butter, jelly, and rolls in my suitcase, and when I dipped down low, I would find a little health foods store and keep a little food on ice in the hotel. It was hard. It was really hard.
Now vegetarianism is much more accepted. A lot of people eat less meat. Many people align eating more vegetables with eating healthier — not being vegetarian for moral reasons necessarily but eating much healthier. We always serve vegetarian meals at company events, and we used to get a lot of flack about it. Now, it's just fine. Just in the 18 years that we've had Amy's, there has been a huge shift in the perception of vegetarianism and also in the number of people who are eating vegetarian meals. I think a lot of this has to do with the aging population; people are more concerned about their health and they are finding that a vegetarian diet can be more healthful and lower in fat and cholesterol. The various diseases that have happened over the years, like mad cow disease in Europe, and all of the seafood that has been found containing toxins has put a pale on some people's appetites for meat. It's a gradual transition.
It is an evolution of more focus on health, more focus on the environment, on animals'a lot more than when I was growing up. More people are becom ing aware of it — not just from a health perspective but also from a moral perspective. I think vegetarianism will just keep growing and growing, not at an enor mous rate but at a good, steady pace.
| VEGETARIAN JOURNAL | Issue Three 2007 | < previous | next > |
