The Golden Globes are going completely vegan this year: "We felt challenged to do better"

If there's anything that the Australian wildfires have shown us, it's that mankind has truly effed with the planet. If you feel totally helpless about how to help abate climate change and all its impacts, one of the easiest changes you can make in your lifestyle is to go vegan. While it may be sad to bid farewell to delicious steaks and gooey cheese, at least you can rest easy knowing you're helping planet Earth. However, no matter how many changes you make in your own lifestyle, it's the big, systemic, and institutional changes that make the most impact - we won't deny that. Therefore, when The Golden Globes announced that their menu this year would be totally plant-based, it was a huge win for environmental activists everywhere.

Yup, it's official, alright. The 77th annual Golden Globe Awards will be saying ta-ta to tuna tartare and saying hello to a bunch of meals comprised entirely of plant-based ingredients. This is a huge deal; it's the first major awards show to go meatless, The Los Angeles Times reports. Furthermore, as the first major awards show of the season, it also sets a precedent for other awards shows to follow suit. Everything from the meals served behind-the-scenes to the snack tables set up for late-comers will feature a vegan menu. Even the "off-camera piles of turkey sandwiches and chunks of cheese" will be replaced, it appears, by meatless, dairy-free options.

But why the sudden change? Lorenzo Soria, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, claimed it was because climate change has come to a point where it is just too difficult to ignore any longer. "Over the holidays, we took time to reflect on the last year and began thinking about the new year and the decade ahead," he told The Los Angeles Times in an official statement. "The climate crisis is impossible to ignore and after speaking with our peers, and friends in the community, we felt challenged to do better. The decision to serve an entirely plant-based meal was embraced by our partners at the Beverly Hilton, and represents a small step in response to a big problem."

Therefore, this year's menu will feature a main course of king oyster mushrooms scallops — of course, no actual scallops will be involved — along with wild mushroom risotto, accompanied by carrots and roasted baby purple and green Brussels sprouts. And while it seems like making the change was easy, there was definitely some resistance. Soria, who decided to make amendments to the menu a mere two weeks before the show, explained, "People were basically saying it’s too late, we’re ready with all the orders, the holidays and all that. But after we began discussions, meeting for one or two days, [the Beverly Hilton team] accepted the change completely. They started to experiment with how to do plant-based meals that were not just their symbolic steps, but also something that guests will enjoy." In addition to the vegan meals, the Golden Globes are bidding adieu to plastic and serving water in glass bottles instead (courtesy Icelandic Glacial) and replacing plastic straws with paper ones. This is already a great start to 2020!