“We don’t put a plate of food on the table. We put a way of life,” says Tati Lund, who founded .Org Bistro, one of the first vegan restaurants in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a decade ago.
Thirty-three-year-old Lund says that when she started her restaurant, though, plant-based diets weren’t as well understood in Brazil. “Here in Brazil, it wasn’t something as well developed as it is today… So I opened saying it was an organic restaurant. Then people came and they realized it was all vegan,” says Lund.
Today, the effects of pioneers like Lund can be seen in the markedly different attitudes about meat-free eating. “Today it’s super cool,” says Lund of veganism in Brazil, using the words “super cool” in English to mean “hip” or “trendy,” although the rest of our conversation is in Portuguese.
In fact, meat-free eating has become so “super cool” that in 2018, a study funded in part by the Brazilian Vegetarian Society, or SVB by its Brazilian initials, showed that 14 percent of Brazilians consider themselves vegan or vegetarian, a 75 percent increase in six years. Not only is that percentage even higher in Brazil’s big cities, but it