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Why Every Restaurant Should be Offering Vegan Options to the Pittsburgh Vegan Community in 2024

Why Every Restaurant Should be Offering Vegan Options in 2024

Being a vegan nutritionist in Pittsburgh, I’m on a mission to help Pittsburgh become one of the most vegan-friendly cities in America.  After 12 years of being vegan, I have learned that silence doesn’t change a thing. When I started to speak up, and let people know that I would like a vegan option, I am frequently greeted with gratitude for sharing my feedback and a willingness to accommodate. Many people don’t even realize they are not inclusive of vegans, until they meet one who says something. I find that if we simply ask for something vegan, we are much more likely to get a vegan option added to the menu.

My Initiative as a Vegan Nutritionist in Pittsburgh

After years and years of feeling limited in my options when dining out, I finally decided to take action. My mission in 2024 is to speak up on behalf of the vegan community, and ask for more restaurants to offer vegan options. Not only do vegans wish that they could dine at more restaurants, but we all want to feel welcome and understood when we dine out. It is far too common that vegans find animal products in their food at restaurants, and mislabeling menu items as vegan is a constant issue I come across.

If you are a restaurant owner who wants to offer something vegan, it is important to know the basics. Vegans don't eat any animal-based ingredients including beef, pork, fish, fish sauce, chicken, eggs, cow's milk, butter, cheese, cream, yogurt, gelatin, bone broth, chicken broth, nor any other meat or dairy products. Many vegans also avoid byproducts of insects, including shellac, honey, confectioner's glaze, and cochineal extract. If you are uncertain if an ingredient is vegan, just ask me or check out vrg.org/ingredients to find out.

What Do Vegans in Pittsburgh Eat?

It might sound restrictive, but vegans have a much longer list of foods they DO eat vs foods they don't. In general, the food groups that we can eat include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. Vegans also can eat foods derived from plant-based ingredients, that can look and taste very similar to non-vegan foods, including burgers, pizzas, tacos, and pastries. For some inspiration, check out what other restaurants are offering and try some vegan recipes!

To be honest, going vegan and transitioning from the standard American diet is not an easy feat, so I understand the confusion. It takes knowledge, trial and error, commitment, time and compassion to fully understand the ins and outs of being vegan. A vegan diet may sound restrictive to someone who is unfamiliar, but grocery stores have everything we need to nourish our bodies.

The biggest struggle for vegans today, is finding restaurants whose staff is knowledgeable about our dietary needs and willing to accommodate us.  It’s a lot of work to have to prep every meal from scratch, and just like everyone else, vegans like to dine out, too! However, most restaurants fail to understand what we eat when creating a menu. There could be many reasons for this, such as a lack of knowledge, a lack of interest, and even a lack of demand.

The Demand for Vegan Menus is On the Rise

When vegans in Pittsburgh are not asking for vegan menus and when they don’t know which restaurants offer vegan options, then the demand appears to be low.  The truth is, creating demand for vegan options will take more effort from the Pittsburgh vegan community and marketing a new vegan menu item will take more effort from Pittsburgh restaurants. Unfortunately, when restaurants offer something vegan but don’t clearly label it on the menu, most vegans don’t buy it.

We really want to support your restaurant, but we also want to dine in with confidence and absolute certainty that what we are getting is, in fact, vegan. Believe it or not, we don’t enjoy asking a million questions, but when the menu isn't labeled properly, we tend to find cheese or meat in our food. That is why we have the obligatory annoying vegan question, of “Is this vegan?” Trust me, it’s equally annoying for us to feel we must ask!

Plus, it can take time for a vegan meal to become popular, so be patient and wait for word to get around. If you’re a Pittsburgh restaurant, you should be talking about your newest vegan option before it becomes available, to increase the hype in our vegan community. In fact, many vegans wait to hear feedback and read reviews from the brave souls who test it out first. I say brave because not every vegan dish is a winner.

Why 2024 is the year to Go Vegan

In today’s day and age, with the increased demand for vegan meats and dairy-free milks, and the rise of flexitarian diets, it’s honestly concerning that so many places still haven’t caught up with the times. I can’t express enough how important it is for Pittsburgh restaurants to offer vegan options in 2024!

If you’re vegan too, please stand with me and speak up for what you want. Restaurant owners need to know that we are here and that we want their menu to be inclusive of our dietary needs. If you’re a restaurant in Pittsburgh, please consider being more vegan-friendly, so that we can add you to the HappyCow directory to increase your visibility to the vegan community and beyond. Let’s all work together to make Pittsburgh the most vegan-friendly city in the U.S.!

My first Petition for Nationwide Vegan Options

While my main focus is in Pittsburgh, some of the chains that exist here in Pittsburgh are also available nationwide. One of those restaurants, Dave and Busters, is a perfect example of a chain that I'd like to see become vegan-friendly around the U.S. I started a petition on March 3rd 2024 for this to happen. Please sign the petition here and share it on social media to help us bring more attention to this matter.

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Vegan nutritionist in Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh Vegan Restaurant Outreach
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America is Going Vegan, Exponentially

America is Going Vegan, Exponentially

Vegetarian diets have been considered healthy in the past few decades, but studies in recent years have questioned the validity of dairy & egg products being healthy as well. With a constant influx of undercover investigations appearing on facebook, youtube, and Netflix documentaries, more and more Americans are becoming aware of what really goes on in factory farms and food processing plants (and eventually into their food.) With heart disease & cancer being the leading causes of death in the United States, and continuing research by Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (1) and NutritionFacts.org (2), people are making the connection between diet and health.

Poor health is not just an adult problem. What children are fed at a young age will determine their health & eating habits as they grow up. Childhood Type II Diabetes has been on the rise, affecting 208,000 U.S. citizens under age 20 and continues to grow (3). 16 million Americans have gone vegan or vegetarian as of 2009 (8), and 100 million have mentioned they started making healthier choices like switching from cow’s milk to dairy-free products or cutting red meat from their diet. The demand for vegan products is higher than ever in 2014, that even schools & daycares are creating plant-based menus for kids! Oh, and did I mention McDonald’s sales dropped 3.8% this month (9)? Yes, America is Going Vegan!

America is Going Vegan, Really! The nation’s first vegetarian public elementary school was announced in May 2014 at Public School 244 in Queens, NY (4). Today, MUSE School CA near Los Angeles has been announced that they will be the first official VEGAN school in the country in 2015 (5). The 2014 Golden Carrot Award winners via PCRM for the most healthy school menus were MUSE School CA, Lincoln Public School District in Lincoln NE, and Desert Garden Montessori School in Phoenix! Yes, we officially have at least FIVE healthy plant-based schools in the U.S. now. And TWO are local!

In addition to Desert Garden Montessori, you can check out the Little Learner’s Group Daycare in Mesa for a fully plant-based menu. The owner, Clarissa, is a former client of mine who has gone vegan through my Nutrition Coaching services, and she now raises her son vegan and wants to ensure good health of the children in her daycare as well. She put together a fully plant-based menu on her own and after extensive efforts, has gotten it approved! Yes, America is Going Vegan! (Golden Carrot Award was given for the Top Vegan School Lunch program.) America is going vegan one school at a time.

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    1. www.PCRM.org 2. www.NutritionFacts.org
    3. http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/statistics/
    4. http://school-stories.org/2014/05/inside-the-nations-first-vegetarian-public-school/
    5. http://www.ecorazzi.com/2014/10/23/ca-school-to-become-first-vegan-school-in-the-country/#.VEmDVIOG5T8.facebook
    6. http://www.pcrm.org/nbBlog/index.php/10th-anniversary-of-the-golden-carrot-award/ 7. http://www.thelittlelearnersgroup.com/
    8. http://news.therawfoodworld.com/16-million-people-us-now-vegan-vegetarian/?utm_content=buffer19afa&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
    9. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mcdonalds-profit-down-30-on-us-china-woes-2014-10-21

    Personal Trainer in Tempe AZ | Plant-Based Nutrition Coach