How Prince William’s Earthshot Prize vegan menu request has left a bad taste

S.aulo Jennings, a well-known Amazonian chef and UN gastronomic tourism ambassador, was reportedly furious after the organizers of Prince William’s Earthshot award asked him to create an entirely vegan menu.

According to Jennings, being told to exclude pirarucu, the region’s iconic giant freshwater fish, was not just a matter of preference but also a lack of respect for culinary traditions.

Prince William founded the Earthshot award to celebrate innovative solutions to the planet’s biggest environmental challenges. This year’s ceremony will take place at Rio de Janeiro’s futuristic Museu do Amanha (Museum of Tomorrow) on November 5, marking the first time Earthshot’s awards ceremony will be held in Latin America.

This event will serve as the opening show for Cop30, which kicks off on November 10 in Belém in the heart of the Amazon, highlighting the region’s central place in climate discussions.

Jennings had agreed to prepare several canapés for the awards ceremony, when a misunderstanding arose. He designed a menu with a vegan option but was later told the entire selection had to be vegan, meaning he could not include any dishes containing pirarucu. “It was like asking Iron Maiden to play jazz,” he told the New York Times. “It was a lack of respect for the local cuisine, our culinary tradition.”

At the museum’s urging, Jennings agreed to design an Amazon-inspired vegan menu using local ingredients. However, by then the deal fell through and another team was chosen to feed the awards ceremony.

Instead, Jennings has been tasked with cooking for the Norwegian and Chinese delegations at Cop30, and will also oversee the catering for the Polis banquet prepared for the heads of state attending the conference. He respectfully assured that in such cases, he will be able to highlight the various flavors of Amazon and serve pirarucu.

By insisting on a vegan menu, the Earthshot award has effectively equated veganism with sustainability. However, although the two concepts may overlap, they are not the same. Some vegan foods, like avocados, have large carbon footprints.

This is just one example of how well-intentioned Western environmental initiatives can unintentionally conflict with the values ​​and food practices of the communities they aim to celebrate.

Impositions on sustainable food practices

The West’s impositions on indigenous food cultures date back to colonial times. Early European settlers viewed their staple crops, such as wheat and barley, as symbols of civilization. On the other hand, they often dismissed Indigenous foods such as Andean grains such as quinoa and amaranth as “primitive.”

This legacy still shapes food hierarchies today. In Peru, for example, communities in the Andes are replacing traditional potatoes with pasta and rice.

Today, consumers both in Brazil and around the world play a role in reinforcing Western ideas through their purchasing choices and perceptions of “authentic,” “exotic,” or “healthy” foods, shaping food exchanges between different countries and market segments while disrupting local economies and traditions.

In Belém, açaí berries form the basis of the local culinary tradition and are traditionally consumed by residents with cassava flour and fish. But in other parts of Brazil and internationally, they have become increasingly known as “superfoods”, fashionably powdered or frozen, or blended into açaí bowls.

In postcolonial nations, local elites (typically composed of non-indigenous people who have historically aligned themselves with Western tastes and values) can sometimes both reinforce and challenge these inequalities.

In Brazil’s culinary scene, elite chefs are leading the definition of a new national haute cuisine that leverages Amazonian ingredients with fine dining techniques. For example, Brazilian celebrity chef Alex Atala celebrates pirarucu by reinterpreting the fish using innovative techniques and presentations at his restaurant DOM in Sao Paulo.

However, this can separate ingredients from their original use and put pressure on manufacturers to offer more, leading to unsustainable practices. That is why Atala is committed to advancing sustainability, research and cultural preservation through Instituto Ata, which aims to showcase the diversity of both Brazilian culture and environment.

According to Indigenous chef Tainá Marajoara, there is a risk that elite Brazilian culture draws heavily on Indigenous traditions and uses Amazonian ingredients without fully acknowledging the debt this modern dish owes to the cultures to which it was appropriated.

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Like Jennings, the UN gastronomic ambassador, Marajoara harshly criticized what he perceived as the dominant mentality among Brazilian chefs. He told the food magazine Saveur that some elite chefs believe “dark-skinned people’s food needs to be updated, as if we didn’t have a wisdom and aesthetic of our own.”

The colonization of Western ideas about sustainability

Many Indigenous communities adopt a “kin-centered” perspective on the natural world; This means that they view humans, plants, and animals as interconnected members of a common ecological family rather than as separate entities.

According to Jennings, sustainability does not mean imposing uniform dietary rules, but living in harmony with the rhythms of nature. As he told the New York Times: “We eat what the forests give us, what the rivers give us. Some days we eat fish, other days we eat hazelnuts and açaí. That’s also sustainable.”

True sustainability requires cultural and ecological respect. At Cop30, Jennings and Marajoara will design menus based on their culture’s deep relationship with the natural world. Their aim is to show that sustainability should be a lived practice, not just the rhetoric of politicians.

We hope their participation will reinforce the important message that meaningful climate solutions depend on Indigenous leadership and knowledge.

Closing the gap between Western assumptions and local ecological realities remains urgent. Marajoara warns: “As long as ancestral lands are violated and violence spreads into forests, rivers and fields, our people and our culture are being killed.”