The American rocker Meat Loaf wholeheartedly supports Frankie & Benny’s advertising campaign, which aims to promote their meat-free menu throughout Veganuary – but draws the line at rebranding his name to ‘Veg Loaf’.
Meat Loaf (given name: Marvin Lee Aday) is collaborating with the Italian-American restaurant franchise to promote their new vegan range, just in time for Veganuary. The new menu includes decadent items such as the Viva La Vegan Burger, vegan Mushroom Bianca and the authentic Calzone Vegano.
Veganuary (initially a UK non-profit organization founded in 2014) encourages people to go vegan for the month of January, and has exploded in popularity in recent years, with more people showing an effort to make conscious health and ethical choices about what food they are putting into their body and where their meals come from. In the UK alone, the number of vegans quadrupled between 2014 and 2019. The plant-based movement and diet switch is also in line with New Year’s Resolutions and their accompanying ethos of self-improvement.
In the tongue-in-cheek advert, a pair of Frankie & Benny’s employees attempt to persuade a reluctant Meat Loaf to become the face of the restaurant chain’s enticing Veganuary campaign, yet fail to persuade the singer to change his iconic name to ‘Veg Loaf’:
Although Meat Loaf refuses to change his epithet in the name of a plant-based diet, he adamantly supports a vegan diet. Speaking to the Daily Star, he said:
When Frankie & Benny’s first approached me to rebrand to Veg Loaf I said no way in hell – I won’t do that.
But, I’d do anything for our planet and dropping meat for veg, even for just one day a week, can make a huge difference – which is why I’m backing Frankie’s new vegan menu.
For some, Meat Loaf’s decision to incorporate a plant-based diet into his lifestyle may seem to be a temporary change, a mere part of a restaurant chain’s PR stint. However, he in fact became vegetarian for around 11 years following an ill-fated restaurant experience in 1981, in which he was served a rabbit with “its head on, no ears and its eyes closed.”
Hopefully, Frankie & Benny’s new vegan menu and advertising campaign with endorsement by famous rock singer Meat Loaf will encourage more people to abandon animal products, suffering and environmental degradation and open their doors to a new life with veganism.
Let’s also hope that reducing the use of animal products extends to the major food chains and corporations which are jumping on the veganism bandwagon, and that with veganism’s exponential surge in popularity these companies will gradually siphon off meat items to replace them with animal-friendly foods. Speaking of which, McDonald’s previously announced a new vegan menu to be released this year.
