Should there be a tax on eating meat and dairy products? Chef’s manifesto for a carbon-neutral food industry - and plant-based recipes to help us play our part
- In Provenance – Principles of Plant-Based Cookery, Hong Kong chef Peggy Chan creates plant-based dishes so tempting even the most ardent omnivores won’t resist
- She also makes the case for a zero-waste, carbon-neutral food industry and shares her research into practical ways to achieve it that can be scaled up
Food lovers in Hong Kong will remember chef Peggy Chan’s vegan restaurants, Grassroots Pantry, which morphed into Nectar, with a menu that made even the most ardent omnivores realise the possibilities of a plant-based diet. Sadly, both restaurants have closed, but many of Chan’s recipes live on in her book, Provenance – Principles of Plant-Based Cookery (2021).
Chan isn’t just a vegan; she also advocates and strives for zero-waste and sustainability.
In the introduction to Provenance, Chan asks some provocative questions. “Our food system is now hanging on a thread. According to a recent study conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), it is estimated that more than a third of global greenhouse emissions caused by human activity can be attributed to the way we produce, process and package food today.
“Meanwhile, knowing what we know now, shouldn’t we be taxing meat and animal dairy consumption on its carbon footprint? Why should we allow industries that exploit the Earth’s finite resources to take advantage of subsidies when they are contributing to the damage of our planet?
“A system that demands us to pay substantially more for the cleaner and more sustainable option is a system that not only isn’t viable for more than 90 per cent of our global population, but also fails to protect our ecosystem.
