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Tel Aviv Hosts World’s Largest Vegan Food Festival
Ismail Manal, who owns an Arab food vegan restaurant, displays her food creations at Tel Aviv's Vegan Fest 2022. (Debbie Mohnblatt/The Media Line)

Tel Aviv Hosts World’s Largest Vegan Food Festival

Israel shows the world its abundant vegan food diversity, innovation and deliciousness

Israel is celebrating Vegan Fest, considered the largest vegan food festival in the world. The three-day event will continue through Thursday at Sarona Park in the heart of Tel Aviv. The festival hosts more than 100 different food stands, and is expected to receive over 100,000 visitors this year.

The first Vegan Fest in Tel Aviv was celebrated in 2013, followed by another in 2019; this week’s festival is the third.

Israel, and Tel Aviv especially, is considered the vegan capital of the world.

Kenneth Gotlib, the head of International Press for the office of the mayor of Tel Aviv-Yafo, told The Media Line that Vegan Fest is one of the ways in which the city’s municipality promotes plant-based food.

He said that Vegan Fest “is one of the best examples of how the municipality supports and promotes a vegan-friendly lifestyle.”

In addition, “the city educates its citizens on clean and healthy living through an array of panels, activities and campaigns benefitting both the residents and the environment,” he said.

Vegan steak. (Debbie Mohnblatt/The Media Line)

Omri Paz, is the founder of Vegan Friendly, an Israeli organization that works to promote veganism and animal rights, which co-hosted the festival with the Tel Aviv municipality.

Israel is considered the most vegan country in the world, Paz told The Media Line. “We have about 5% vegans in Israel, 5% vegetarians, and when we started ten years ago there was only 1% vegans, so we’re really excited about the huge change that happened in the last 10 years,” he said.

Paz started Vegan Friendly by himself 10 years ago when he was a law student in Jerusalem and working full time as a security guard.

He said that Vegan Friendly now has 40 workers in Israel and 8 workers in the United Kingdom where it expanded two years ago; this month, the organization will start operations in the United States as well.

Vegan Friendly works to make veganism accessible, and raises awareness about industrial livestock production, known as factory farming. Paz said that the organization also provides labels for products and restaurants that are vegan friendly so that they can be easily identified by consumers.

Today the organization has 10,000 vegan products labeled in Israel, and 2,000 in the UK. About 3,000 different businesses or branches are certified by Vegan Friendly in both countries, which Paz described as “really exciting.”

“This includes the biggest brands in the world like Domino’s Pizza and Papa John’s, Unilever, Nestle – we work with all the biggest companies and are really happy that we can make an impact,” he said.

Behind every stand at the festival, The Media Line found people with diverse backgrounds, stories and products.

El Rachmani, founder and owner of the popular 416 restaurant in Tel Aviv, serves food at Vegan Fest. (Debbie Mohnblatt/The Media Line)

El Rachmani is one of them. He is the founder and owner of the popular 416 restaurant in Tel Aviv, which is famous for its vegan steaks.

He told The Media Line that he is not a classically trained chef, but he started cooking when he left his parents’ house and became a vegan at the age of 18. “I started learning how to mix all these flavors and textures and colors,” he said.

Rachmani, an Israeli who grew up in America, recalled how surrounded he was by food and foodie people when he was younger, which inspired him to open the successful restaurant that he owns today.

416’s famous vegan steaks are made of seitan, and it took five years of changing and adjusting recipes to create the acclaimed vegan meat that the restaurant serves.

Rachmani believes that vegan food is not only for vegans. “People that aren’t Japanese eat sushi all the time, you don’t have to be vegan to enjoy a nice vegan meal,” he said.

Or Biba, is founder of Ecosupp, the first Israeli company to introduce vegan liquid supplements to the market, which was founded 12 years ago.

On top of the fact that everything is vegan, Biba told The Media Line, “our raw material is carefully chosen, and it has the best quality out there, our absorption technology is also very developed.”

She explained that Ecosupp is the pioneer in Israel for the Liposomal technology, which facilitates the easy absorption of nutrients into the body.

Or Biba creates vegan liquid supplements. (Debbie Mohnblatt/The Media Line)

“Our slogan is ‘connecting between science and nature,’ and it is very important for us to say that all of our products are sustainable, promote ecological values and are vegan,” she said.

Biba explained that, for example, vitamin D is usually made of fish liver, and that her company’s is 100% vegan. “It is made from the lichen plant that is a combination of a seaweed and a mushroom which absorbs the rays of the sun,” she explained.

Biba added that she identified the need for her company since she was a vegan sportswoman and marathon runner and noticed that the food supplements that she needed were not available on the Israeli market.

Reiner Weerman, general manager for the Middle East and North Africa region at Upfield, a Dutch company which states that it is the largest plant-based food company in the world, was also at the festival.

Upfield owns many plant-based food brands. One of them is Violife, which focuses on producing vegan cheeses.

“We are now in around 65 countries where we have rolled out Violife and it’s growing like crazy,” Weerman told The Media Line.

The reason it is growing so well, he continued, “is that it’s one of the only vegan cheeses which is free of everything; so, it’s free of nuts, free of palm oil, it’s free of allergens, free of lactose, it’s 100% natural, and it tastes great.”

The Violife cheeses’ main ingredients are vegetables and coconut oil.

Weerman said that eating vegan food is a great way to fight global warming.

“I know the true impacts of food on climate change,” he said. “Food causes 1/3 of CO2 emissions, which is the main driver for global warming.” If we don’t change the way we eat, Weerman added, “we will not fight climate change, it’s that simple.”

He explained that by 2050 the world will be feeding 10 billion people, which is not sustainable. “So, what we need to do, to make the very complex issue very simple, is to reduce CO2 emissions per dish,” he said.

Violife vegan cheeses. (Debbie Mohnblatt/The Media Line)

That’s why, he explained, “we feel it as our responsibility as the global biggest plant-based food company; we are investing millions in the development of great-tasting plant-based food because we know we can talk forever about CO2 emissions but, at the end of the day, whether we be chefs or people at home, we just want to have a great dish with great taste.”

Weerman described Israel as a very interesting market since Israelis are the frontrunners when it comes to plant-based food adoption.

“I think that Tel Aviv is the capital of the world when it comes to plant-based food. Basically, what you see here in the market will happen elsewhere with one-, two- or three-years delay,” he said.

That’s why the whole world is here now, he added. “That’s why Violife is here now, because this is where you can feel the ground, you know what’s going to happen, you can look around and see what’s going to happen elsewhere, in the United States and Europe, in a few years.”

Maayan Eliasi also was presenting her vegan protein bakery at the festival. She is a vegan bodybuilder who believes that she can keep it natural and vegan and still build her muscles.

“I had a violent relationship and it all it happened together with the understanding that I love animals and I couldn’t do it anymore,” she told The Media Line.

She explained how many were skeptical of her success as she was attempting to win body-building competitions while maintaining a vegan lifestyle and going natural.

“I won as Miss Israel four times and now I represent Israel bodybuilding and WNBF, a union which is for natural bodybuilding, no substances; we have a polygraph test and urine tests and I’m going to represent Israel in Vegas this year,” she explained.

Maayan Eliasi, a vegan bodybuilder, teamed up with Anastasia, a biochemist and weight lifter, to create a vegan protein bakery. (Debbie Mohnblatt/The Media Line)

That is why she created a vegan protein bakery with Anastasia, who is an English doctor in biochemistry and also a lifter.

“It’s very hard because it’s hard for people to believe that we can actually get all this protein without killing animals; everything is plant based, everything is sustainable,” she said.

These two successful and vegan bodybuilders want to show the world that it is possible to build muscles by using the protein of legumes.

Ismail Manal owns an Arab food vegan restaurant.

“All my food is vegan today, it is made from the best raw materials, every meal is based on the Arab kitchen, this is authentic Arab food,” she said.

She described how amazed she is by the products that the plants can provide.

Manal said that “vegan food is much more healthy, organic and shows us that we can also live without bothering animals.”

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