Going Plant-Based is Good for Business, Sex life, and Fame. Winners & Losers

Who knew all you had to do to get rich and famous was ditch the dairy and kick meat to the curb? Here, we round up the vegan winners and losers of the week, since it's been quite a roiling start to 2020 and we thought -- why not share the glory? Our first Winners & Losers:

We are inundated with stories about how going vegan has already been a boon to the bottom line (of Dunkin Donuts) and the sex life (of an Aussie Comedian), as well as the planet (as hundreds of thousands of new vegans signed up to put a fork in it for Veganuary) and human health (we're cheering the diabetics who got off their meds). Consider the Vegan Winners of the Week:

An Australian comedian's sex life got much MUCH better, he says. Comedian Dave Hughes told his radio audience that after watching The Game Changers he had this revelation to go fully plant-based (he was already party eating this way) and ipso facto, it worked! Hughes is little known in American, but definitely moving up the search algorithm, thanks to this over-share moment.

Speaking on his radio show, Hughesy And Ed, Hughes reportedly said: "Being a vegan or plant-based is a game-changer in the bedroom."

He added: "There we go. I'm claiming it."  Bad-dum-dum.

Dunkin Donuts' Q4 Bottom line got a nice boost from their meatless breakfast sandwich. The chain saw sales grow of 3.7 percent even while the foot traffic dropped. According to Restaurant Dive (which you may not be reading on the regular):

Dunkin's U.S. same-store sales rose 2.8% during its fourth quarter, the highest level in six years.

The brand attributes the spike to its plant-based Beyond Sausage Sandwich, which it put on menus in November, along with sales of Cold Brew.

More surprisingly these numbers popped up while overall traffic declined during the fourth quarter, but the new Beyond breakfast sandwich boosted the average check to over $9.

Veganuary was a major winner in 2020, as more people searched that term than "Dry January" according to The Economist. Some 400,000 people signed up for the month giving plant-based eating a try, and we guess that even more tried it than signed int to the program, founded by an English couple who started it for ethical reasons. British Google searches for Veganuary matched those for Dry January for the first time this year. A glance at their site shows that the number one reason is personal health followed by climate concern.

And on a more serious note, it was a VERY good New Year for 51 Diabetes patients who got to start 2020 without needing all the meds after 20 weeks of going on a plant-based diet.

We're more than a little impressed with 51 type 2 diabetic patients in Slovakia who got to throw away their medication as the result of following a plant-based protocol.

The Natural Food Interaction (NFI) diet is a personalized whole-food plant-based diet plan founded by David Hickman and Zuzana Plevov a biomedical scientist. The customized diet has yielded impressive results in an ongoing National Trial in Slovakia, with 82.9 percent of patients reported to have stopped all medication within 20 weeks. WoooHooo.

Of course, it wasn't all unicorns and rainbows out there in Plant-Land. Starbucks found itself having to deal with sit-ins and protests when PETA told its followers to show up and act loud about The "vegan tax" which is another way of looking at the fact that the chain still charges extra for non-dairy milk alternatives in your java.

Activists popped up inside Starbucks coffee shops with signs decrying the so-called "vegan tax," which they've argued is discriminatory against more than just vegans. The demonstrations were held in major markets, including New York City, Arlington, Virginia; San Diego; Portland, Oregon; and others.