Vegan World: Israel: Global leader of plant-based food consumption

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02:16

Today is World Vegan Day, and many "foodies" will tell you that plant-based food is the hottest culinary trend this year. Leading the way is Israel, dubbed by one British newspaper as "the Vegan Capital of the world". As CGTN's Stephanie Freid reports, it's a country where vegan restaurants, lifestyle and activism are on the rise.

Images so discomfiting that viewers feel compelled to take action.

That's the response vegan advocates are aiming for: Global change. A vegan world.

Per capita, Israel is the global leader when it comes to plant-based food consumption. Surveys show five percent of Israelis call themselves vegan – compared, for example, with just one percent of Brits who say the same.

OMRI PAZ, FOUNDER VEGAN-FRIENDLY, TEL AVIV "Last year we had the biggest animal rights march in history. We got about thirty thousand people marching in the streets."

STEPHANIE FREID TEL AVIV "The ideology goes beyond caring for animals. Dairy and meat industries produce more of the world's deadliest gas emissions than all transportation combined."

Vegan activists are lobbying governments for reforms they predict will materialize whether people like it or not.

OMRI PAZ, FOUNDER VEGAN-FRIENDLY, TEL AVIV "Countries are going to restrict or heavily tax animal products just because of their huge footprint on the environment. They won't actually have a choice because it'll be either that or the destruction of their countries."

Israel is ahead of the curve. It's tough to find an urban restaurant without vegan menu items - from high-end zucchini stuffed with smoked wheat and fig to a Mideast staple shawarma.

HAREL ZAKAIM, OWNER SULTANA, TEL AVIV "We've got soy and two kinds of mushrooms in the shawarma. It's actually the same as a regular shawarma."

Next on the activism agenda: a virtual reality experience linking food choices to animal factory farming.

Participants click on a virtual menu item - like steak - and are transported to a MEAT processing plant where they experience that choice through the eyes of a cow. Stephanie Freid, CGTN, Tel Aviv.