A Drift Toward Apathy: What the slowdown of veganism reveals about American culture
The recent cultural decline of veganism isn’t about the failure of its ethics; rather, it’s about the cultural mood that once made those ethics feel contagious. The question is whether animal ethics can be re-rooted inside a broader politics of care. The next wave of veganism won’t look like the last. It won’t be driven by hype cycles or celebrity endorsements, but by something slower and harder to extinguish: a communal refusal to keep treating cruelty as normal. Whether that takes hold depends less on markets than on whether people can recover a basic sense that their choices matter — that care itself isn’t pointless.
EVAN SHAMOON: Just a few years ago, veganism felt like a surging cultural force in the US. Documentaries found huge audiences, fast food chains raced to add plant-based options, and celebrities and athletes framed it as the future. For a moment, it seemed like veganism might become part of a broader, values-driven politics.
To be sure, both here and around the world, material progress is definitely still happening. Schools are introducing plant-based days or entirely vegan menus… Plant-based meat sales both in Europe and globally are on track to rise for the third consecutive year. These are all good things.
But in the US in particular, the energy that once made veganism feel like an inevitability has quieted. Sales of plant-based meat have been spiraling downward for several years… What felt like the beginning of a sweeping movement now feels like a plateau. What happened?
Part of the answer lies in the broader culture shift of the past half-decade. Where the late 2010s were marked by climate protests and youth-led movements, the 2020s have largely been defined by burnout, irony, and political entropy. The stakes got so high, the systems so unresponsive, and the corruption so glaring that for many, the idea that individual choices — or even collective pressure — could meaningfully change anything started to feel naive…
Of course, veganism’s stumbles also can’t be separated from the rise of two overlapping food trends: the current protein obsession and the backlash against “ultra-processed” foods… At the same time, a cultural recoil from ultra-processed foods has cast suspicion on vegan alternatives. The meat industry has pushed hard into this framing, branding plant-based burgers and sausages as fake, artificial, and unhealthy…
The political context has only deepened the problem. In the US, meat isn’t just dinner — it’s identity, myth, and belonging, tied up in ideas about masculinity, self-reliance, and national character. In the Trump era, meat has once again surged as a culture war weapon: proof of strength, self-reliance, and resistance to “woke dogma.”
On the left, meanwhile, the old consensus around consumer action has fractured. Veganism is often dismissed as a distraction from pressing human struggles like colonialism, labor rights, racial justice, housing, and healthcare. The effect is that veganism gets vilified by the right and sidelined by the left… As Henry Mance recently wrote in the Financial Times, liberals once prepared to make sacrifices for a better society have lost faith…
It’s tempting to see all of this as proof that veganism was just another fad. But the recent cultural decline of veganism isn’t about the failure of its ethics; rather, it’s about the cultural mood that once made those ethics feel contagious…
And yet, the exigencies of veganism — mass-scale animal suffering, ecological collapse, public health crises — are only intensifying. The question is whether animal ethics can be re-rooted inside a broader politics of care… As Mance wrote, veganism can regain momentum “if the public regains a sense of possibility”…
The next wave of veganism won’t look like the last. It won’t be driven by hype cycles or celebrity endorsements, but by something slower and harder to extinguish: a communal refusal to keep treating cruelty as normal. Whether that takes hold depends less on markets than on whether people can recover a basic sense that their choices matter — that care itself isn’t pointless, even now. SOURCE
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