Vegan Practically

McDonald’s Canada has been trying out a new veggie offering. According to the McD’s website, the McVeggie “features a breaded veggie patty made with a blend of vegetables (including carrots, green beans, zucchini, peas, soybeans, broccoli and corn) and seasoning, topped with shredded lettuce and mayo-style sauce served on a toasted sesame bun.” PETA says it’s vegan if you ask them to hold the sauce.

So far, this seems like “Fun Friday” news. But I have questions that go beyond, “is it vegan?” First, I want to question the marketing, that is all and only about providing plant-based options to broaden consumer choice and says nothing about animal cruelty or the environmental impact of fast food. Second, on that topic of animal cruelty the environmental impact of fast food, of which McD’s is undoubtedly among the world’s giants, should we be supporting McDonald’s at all? On the one hand, yay for plant-based options. On the other hand, animal cruelty and environmental harm (have you read Fast Food Nation?)

These two issues are related, since McDonald’s brand is so focused on animal products (issue #2) that it is not likely to focus its marketing of vegan or vegetarian options on anything to do with animal cruelty or environmental harm. Recognizing that, we can still say that introducing vegan options without mentioning these reasons disguises the reality of why they are so urgently needed. As reported by CTV News (under the “Health” category), McDonald’s says: “Canadians asked for more options to meet modern lifestyles, and we listened.”

Their marketing angle is of course that they are responding to consumer choice. In some respects, that’s promising because it at least suggests what should be obvious but is sometimes lost on us: consumers can indeed influence large corporations. That’s a good thing, at least in this case. Consumers’ desire for choice has yielded a product that doesn’t involve dead animals.

On September 13, 1970, Milton Friedman published a piece in the New York Times, entitled “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” In it he argues for the individualist view that corporations cannot have social responsibilities because they are not persons. If a “corporate executive” makes any corporate decision for reasons of social conscience and not profit, and if those decisions reduce profits, the executive is imposing a tax on the shareholders. It’s socialism, he says. I’ve taught this piece in a business ethics class before (as has almost anyone who has ever taught business ethics) and it’s disturbingly attractive to students to think this way.

But Friedman is wrong. We should and do expect more from businesses even when it affects their bottom line. But most corporations don’t operate that way. It’s not that McDonald’s, for example, doesn’t do things that demonstrate a sense of social responsibility. No one can deny that the Ronald McDonald Houses that support families whose children are in hospitals provide a worthy service. But doing something virtuous over here doesn’t “buy” you a free pass to act badly elsewhere.

So back to the McVeggie. In marketing it as an option created to meet consumer demand for choice, there is not just a missed opportunity but a glossing over of why many consumers want this choice. And that’s where a further demerit point enters into the picture. In not offering the most compelling reasons, it looks as if they are responding to the “plant-based” crowd who are seeking “healthier” options.

Is the McVeggie a healthy option just because it’s plant-based? Clearly not. Which then leads a nutrionist interviewed for the CTV article to say this: ““It seems like it’s just vegetables covered in breadcrumbs, some sort of a coating with probably a lot of binders to hold everything together…I would rather people eat a hamburger, to be honest.”

Indeed, Guelph food marketing professor Sadaf Mollaei says the marketing approach to the McVeggie is “refined” compared to previous attempts to launch a plant-based option. She says, “It’s not replacing the burger … it’s just another thing…So even if you are not a vegan or a vegetarian … it’s this new product that you might like.” Consumer choice wins the day.

Question: Is it something to support or avoid?

Maybe it’s not all bad. Vegans on road trips rightly lament the lack of plant-based options. Now there is something they can get even when McD’s is the only option. Also, we too like fast-food sometimes. Not everyone has access to Odd Burger and V-Foodspot. The McVeggie offers an easily accessible fast-food option.

You might even think that, despite that their marketing message is wrong, at least they’ve responded to consumer choice and it’s better to have a vegan option than not. In order to keep that option available, and perhaps even to influence the introduction of more vegan options in the future, such as making oat milk standard for the coffee, or offering a Just Egg McMuffin for breakfast, it makes sense to support it.

When places introduce vegan options and there is no uptake, they feel justified in removing those options from the menu. This happened when Tim Horton’s briefly had a Beyond Sausage breakfast sandwich. It was a very badly prepared version of beyond sausage — they made it in the microwave, but nevermind. It constituted a major fail and lasted just a few months. Rather than making it better, they just stopped offering it completely.

Given that we live in a world where fully plant-based restaurants are not everywhere, showing an omni restaurant that their efforts to offer plant-based options pay off in terms they can understand (namely, the bottom line) might encourage them to continue developing that side of the menu.

With that in mind, I will be trying the McVeggie (hold the mayo!) and will report back on that. Even if I like it I’m not going to start going to McDonald’s all the time. But if a conglomerate like McDonald’s can see its way to offering some regular plant-based items, even if it’s not at the moment for all the right reasons, maybe we have reason to hope for more significant change down the road. Baby steps.