Beyonce and Jay Z at the Met Gala red carpet. (Image courtesy: AFP)
As revolutions go, the one Beyonce and Jay Z are planning - to make the world go vegan - got off to a start somewhat more subdued than Queen Bey's sheer Met Gala gown.
Beginning Dec 3, 2013, the pair took to social media (he to his Life & Times blog, then she to Instagram) to announce they would start a 22-day vegan challenge. It was the day before Jay Z's 44th birthday, and also just after the couple had become partners in a vegan food company founded by Marco Borges, their trainer and "life coach" (his description).
This February, roughly a year later, 22 Days Nutrition, as their company is called, debuted a vegan meal delivery service (about $600 for the full 22 days), which Borges said grew out of demand for help when the pair shared the challenge on social media. (22 Days is so named because psychology holds that it takes 21 days to make a habit, so by 22 you're on your way.)
The meals are just one soy-, dairy- and gluten-free morsel of their plans to turn us all vegan - or at least, to make us "lean toward it," as Borges said, which is what the couple now do. ("First it's important that you know I am not a vegan," Beyoncé wrote in an email.)
22 Days already sells protein bars and powders. The partners are currently testing which fruits and vegetables - besides the kale Borges makes the couple - can be turned into "chiplike substances" for packaged snacks. It's Borges and the couple's chef doing the experimenting. "I don't really cook, but I'm a really good taste tester," Beyonce said.
The company is also talking juices and - for those of us without a chef who can pop over to Nobu to brush up on his Japanese sauce-making for the vegetables (as Beyonce and Jay Z's chef did) - grab-and-go meals in supermarkets and in stand-alone stores or stores-within-stores. This revolution, it seems, will be spiralized and served over quinoa, with meals available worldwide, in theory as easy to buy as a Coke.
"We know that people want to be healthy, but for some reason, convenience trumps health," said Borges, a vegan for more than 10 years, though he is reluctant to put a date on it because he feels that then people dismiss him as too hard-core to be relatable. "We have this human nature of making everything competition-based," he said. (The company's plans, by the way, also include rebranding the word "vegan"; its partners prefer "plant-based" because with vegan, "you picture someone who lives in Colorado that doesn't wear deodorant. There's a negative stereotype," Borges said.)
Beyonce and Jay Z obviously have a few things going on already, so why this foray into the often-lampooned world of the celebrity lifestyle
guru and veganism? In an email, Beyoncé wrote "at first it's the little things I noticed: I had more energy" - though, sadly, not enough to deal with a reporter asking about it on the phone, as had been promised for more than a month. Beyoncé, a representative explained, has not answered any direct questions for more than a year. Just back from vacation in Hawaii, she politely responded by email, sounding rather less fiery than the company's South American fiesta lentils.
"The benefits of a plant-based diet need to be known," Beyonce wrote. "We should spend more time loving ourselves, which means taking better care of ourselves with good nutrition and making healthier food choices."
Scarlet beet brown rice with kabocha, anyone?