The race to plant-based food: How the Paris Olympics became the most vegan ever
The Paris Olympics' pledged to double the amount of plant-based food on offer. But prioritising planetary health alongside sporting prowess has involved balancing different interests.
Music, romance and regicide: the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics was a riot of French passions. Among them was food, with a naked Dionysus, the Greek God of wine and festivity, sprawled with Bacchanalian abandon among a pile of produce. Another was revolution, taking the form of a gory Marie Antoinette, the beheaded 18th-Century queen, peering down from her historic former prison.
Recently however, these two French themes – of food and political fury – have combined, and dietary choices have become a source of intense and growing protest.
Early in 2024, hundreds of French farmers, angry about falling incomes and rising bureaucracy, took to their tractors to block major highways. "Mangez Francais", meaning "eat French", was spelled out in parked trucks, and dozens of protesters were arrested after attempting to besiege a food market outside the capital.
A few weeks later, a very different set of French food activists descended on the Louvre Museum within the city. Two members of the climate action collective Riposte Alimentaire (Food Retaliation) marched inside and sprayed pumpkin soup over the Mona Lisa. Their demands included the "right to healthy and sustainable food", and increased awareness of the toll on the planet taken by the food sector.
After a clean-up, the painting's famous smile remains as inscrutable as ever. Yet these battles over the future of food are neither new nor isolated, and have involved breaking a lot of eggs. Two years ago, it was cake that was hurled at the Mona Lisa as a protester urged people to "think of the Earth", while the farmers' protests have been taking place across Europe for over 12 months.
Advocates from the two movements can often feel at odds, with calls to reduce emissions-intensive meat-eating clashing with the agricultural sector's demand for greater support for its animal products. Even the words used to describe plant-based meat alternatives have resulted in tension between the French government and the top administrative court.
Far from ignoring these controversies, however, the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris dived right in – and offered a different, more conciliatory approach. Instead of pitting environmental needs against farmers' interests, they have attempted to protect the concerns of both, via pledges to increase the meat-free options and boost the amount of French-sourced produce.
"You can't just say: 'We don't want any more burgers made of beef.' That's just not possible," says Philipp Wurz, the Paris Games' head of food. "You have to be a bit more polite and say 'Okay, I want to propose alternative solutions. I want to have both.' Because there will be some menus where we have this item, [and also some] that propose alternatives, like a chicken burger, and a vegan, or vegetarian burger.
"We got some feedback from the meat lobby, asking, 'Why are you doing this? Can you explain?' But when you remind them that we only purchase high-quality meat, then they accept the idea."
Vive la vegetarianism
Ahead of this year's games, the Paris hosts touted a new set of culinary priorities in an ambitious new Food Vision. Together with a goal of doubling the amount of plant-based food served at any other Olympics, Paris 2024 also promised to source 80% of products from within France, and 25% from within 250km (155 miles) of the venues. Thirty percent would be certified organic.
Most venues for spectators have served plant-based options as two-thirds of their offerings, says Wurz. In addition, for the first time in modern Olympic history, one stadium – the urban park at Place de la Concorde, hosting the skateboarding, breakdancing and BMX events –is entirely meat-free. The football stadiums, in contrast, have only been mandated to offer 40% plant-based food. Wurz says this is because they're largely based outside of Paris and have long-standing catering arrangements for matches.
Providing food for the Games has not been without challenges. At the event's start, athletes complained about the shortages of meat and eggs and the rationing of breakfast foods within the Olympic village dining halls. In its second week, British swimmer Adam Peaty also claimed worms had been found in food and that the general quality and quantity on offer was inadequate.
In an interview prior to the games, however, Wurz stressed that the 60% plant-based quota of food offerings was only applicable to venues serving spectators, and not to athletes inside the Olympic village. And a few days after the first reports of shortages, Valentine Serres, a spokeswoman for Sodexo Live!, the official catering partner in the Olympic village, told news Future Planet that all items were now "available in adequate quantities"
Despite athlete's provisions being outside the two-thirds plant-based target, around 30% of offerings inside competitors' food halls are vegetarian, says Wurz, and include veggie versions of beef-bourguignon and lasagne. But many different meat dishes are also on the menu: "It's impossible for us to impose on a foreign delegation a diet: athletes have their special diets and, as an organising committee, our main role is to ensure they feel at home".
So what did it take to establish these various goals? And do the targets go far enough in prioritising planetary health alongside sporting prowess?
At the London Olympics in 2012, strides were already being made towards more eco-conscious catering. London's Food Vision required eggs to be 100% free-range, fish to be demonstrably sustainable and wild-caught, and milk sourced from organic-certified farms. More than a decade on, numerous nations have since updated their national dietary guidelines to embrace the flexitarian diets that international scientific reviews recommend. In Germany, new advice counsels that the general public should consume at least 75% plant-based food.
The Paris Olympics have reflected this trend. By aiming to serve twice as much plant-based food, the catering offering is consistent with the Games' overarching ambition to cut carbon emissions by half compared to previous Olympics in Rio and London, Wurz says.
This goal involves each meal being produced with, on average, the equivalent of just 1kg of CO2 emissions. According to the Food Vision, this target is half the 2kg carbon footprint of meals served at previous Games, or around half that of the average person in France (just over 2kg per meal).
Further commitments in the detail of the Paris games' food plan include a pledge to halve the amount of protein from animal products in all food provided. In terms of dishes on offer, the result is an array of vegan and vegetarian options – such as green lentil dahl with coriander skyr, which, according to Sodexo Live! is the signature dish of the athletes village's executive chef Charles Guilloy.
But even if all these promised forward strides are taken, are the Paris Olympics' food goals enough?
According to Jasmijn De Boo, chief executive of ProVeg International, a food awareness organisation, the target to serve twice as much plant-based food (than the average French person eats) is "very appropriate for an event in the global spotlight".
The goal is in keeping with France's trend towards meat reduction, De Boo points out, with a 2023 EU-funded Smart Protein report finding that France had the largest proportion of meat eaters who said that they reduced their meat intake during the previous year, with 18% reducing their consumption by 50% or more.
This also echoes the two-thirds plant-based catering goal set at 2023's Cop28 climate conference, as well as the 2024 Bonn Climate Conference's decision to serve mainly vegan food. Considering these were events specifically focused on reducing emissions, they would also have been expected "to go further than the sport-focused Paris Olympics", De Boo notes.
Fabrice DeClerck, science director at Eat, a non-profit specialising in transforming the global food system, also finds the Paris commitments "impressive", especially the decision to frame the goals in terms of "responsible" consumption.
