“I used to live for meat and cheese”: This nuclear analyst is trying to get the City of Toronto to go vegan

Most people don’t expect their municipal government to have culinary chops, but as it turns out, city-based organizations do serve a lot of food, and Toronto is no exception. The city provides more than two million meals per year in its long-term care homes, plus the ones it serves in shelters, child care centres and at special events.

Lately, environmental activists have realized that these big kitchens could make a sizable dent in the climate crisis through one simple change: making all those meals plant-based by default. The Plant Based Treaty is a global petition calling on governments to transition away from animal agriculture and toward leafy greens, with the goal of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. Other cities, including Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Edinburgh, have already signed on to put veggies first.

Related: The co-owner of popular salad restaurant Mandy’s on potato chip mix-ins, TikTok trends and how much is too much for a salad

Treaty supporter Bernie Fitzpatrick wants Toronto to follow suit. A worker in nuclear energy with a PhD in fusion, he’s not your average advocate for food-based activism. Here, he weighs in on his fight to get the city to go plant-based, overcoming his own carnivorous cravings and how he went from fixating on artificial sun to obsessing over imitation bacon.

First of all, how did your concern for the environment lead you to nuclear science? I’ve been interested in the environment for as long as I can remember. One day I was sitting in my Grade 10 science class, watching a video describing nuclear fusion, the process of creating a sun on earth within a metallic bottle and using it as an unlimited energy source. The video focused on the enormous challenge of containing the material, called plasma, which is hundreds of millions of degrees. Right then, I decided I wanted to be part of that challenge.

Back then, did you have any inkling that environmentalism could mean more than just advances in technology—like, say, shifting food consumption habits? Not at all. I knew about the three R’s—reduce, reuse, recycle—but beyond that, I thought the only way to help the environment was to eliminate pollution, and nuclear fusion energy had the potential to do that.

So how did you go from nuclear fusion to food? It was a bit of a roundabout journey. I adopted a plant-based diet in 2015 for personal reasons, namely that I didn’t want to contribute to animal suffering anymore. I became involved in some animal activism, and through that I heard about the Plant Based Treaty. By that time, I had already completed a PhD in fusion energy, and I was working in nuclear fission, which is the conventional way of making nuclear power and a very low-emissions energy source. It all tied together nicely.

Is food really that big of a deal, climate-wise? Oh, yes. Animal agriculture isn’t just about meat—it’s about clothing too. While estimates vary, there’s evidence that animal agriculture produces more emissions than every car, bus, truck, SUV, plane, ship and submarine on the planet. If we want to solve the climate emergency, it won’t be enough to come up with the ideal car. We need to address agriculture too.

With all this concern about the environment, isn’t it weird that you’ve joined forces with the people producing nuclear waste? There’s no contradiction there. Nuclear fission produces an enormous amount of energy from a very small amount of fuel. I happen to have a scale model of a nuclear fuel bundle—it’s only about half a metre long. If it were loaded with 19 kilograms of uranium, it could power a household for 100 years. That’s the equivalent of 270 tonnes of coal or 193 tonnes of oil. If one person were to use nuclear energy for everything, the amount of waste they would produce in their entire lifetime would fit in a one-litre water bottle. The waste is also nice and contained, making it easy to isolate—unlike fossil fuel exhaust, which spews out of a smokestack.

It sounds like you’ve gone from embracing technological solutions to behavioural ones. Does that mean tech can’t save us? Ultimately, people choose what technologies they use, and in a democracy, you can’t take away those choices. We can generate electricity in a variety of ways, but those decisions are influenced by what the electorate wants—and if a given way of making electricity loses favour, politicians will phase it out. Likewise, if we want to displace animal agriculture, we need to have the public on board.

How do you do that without enraging the meat eaters? Again, you can’t take away people’s choices, but you can change the default option. For example, New York’s public hospitals serve plant-based meals by default, but they aren’t the only option. They just incentivized patients to choose them because they’re better for the environment and have certain health benefits. Making that change reduced the hospitals’ food-related climate emissions by about 36 per cent and cut their costs by 59 cents per plate. And on top of it all, patients reported a 90 per cent satisfaction rate with the food.

If the City of Toronto were to give you everything you wanted, what would change here? I’d like to see the city offer plant-based meals by default everywhere it serves meals, including in long-term care homes and child care centres under its jurisdiction. And they would have to be good meals—meals people would want to choose next time.

What kind of meals are we talking about? Up to the hour I went plant-based, I lived to eat meat and cheese. It took me many visits to vegan restaurants and a lot of experimentation with different plant-based products before I found the foods that satisfied my craving for meat. If I can do it, anybody can. I’ve come to enjoy meals that are rich in protein, like lentils, beans, tofu and chickpeas. I also eat a lot of mock meats, like seitan. If it were up to me, we’d serve meals that included a mix of those.

When you’re cooking at home, what’s your go-to recipe? Spinach mushroom lasagna with a homemade cashew-based ricotta. I eat a lot of sweets too, like brownies or chocolate cakes, which can be made plant-based using flax seed–based eggs—they’re a staple in any vegan baking household.

So, to be clear, you’re not trying to get all of Toronto to go vegan? I would be very pleased if all of Toronto went vegan! But I know it’s not going to happen overnight. My role in supporting the Plant Based Treaty is to at least try to create the option for more plant-based meals—meals that don’t contribute to the terrible consequences of the climate crisis.

Cities like LA and Amsterdam have signed on to the treaty, but is there anything about Toronto that would make our efforts particularly meaningful? We have a very vibrant vegan restaurant scene, partly because we’re such a multicultural city. I think people would enjoy sampling the food from the vegan Vietnamese restaurant around the corner or the Ethiopian restaurant down the street. I don’t think you could find another city with a more vibrant array of vegan options.

Do you have a favourite vegan restaurant in Toronto? I refuse to name one—you have to try them all. I will say that the Toronto Vegans Facebook page is great—you can search for Asian fusion or Italian, and the community will help you find what you’re looking for.

Are there any particular foods you haven’t found a satisfying replacement for? Until recently, bacon was hard to emulate. But one of my friends pointed out that the taste of bacon can be mostly attributed to the flavour of smoke. I found a recipe that involves smoked paprika, nutritional yeast and soy sauce. When baked on rice paper, it has the right shape and size and tastes almost identical to bacon. We have to recognize that people have different tastes, and shifting away from meat means finding ways to satisfying all cravings.

Have you heard anything from city council about adopting the treaty? I haven’t heard from my councillor, Chris Moise, but I did make a presentation to the budget committee last winter. So far, six other councillors have signed on. I’d encourage any councillor on the fence to invite us into their office: we’d be more than happy to deliver a customized presentation about why it’s a good thing for the city and their constituents.

Any advice for young climate activists in training? Find out what you’re good at and use it to benefit the environment. For me, that was science and math—and now I do calculations and analyses to demonstrate the safety of nuclear power plants. For anyone interested in the environment itself, environmental studies could lead to a career in monitoring and enforcing regulations that protect nature. If you’re interested in food, consider becoming a plant-based chef and help develop vegan bacon 2.0.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.