'Season 11 of Gruen has just begun on Australian TV. And it completed 100 episodes in 2017.
So what? You may ask. And err, what on earth does Gruen even mean? 

Gruen is a show “that tracks advertising almost as closely as advertising tracks you “. Ah, so one of those CNBC Storyboard type programs, you may say. Well, it occupies the prime 8:30pm slot on mainstream network ABC. It consistently features among the top-rated programmes nationally across all channels.  It’s been a turbo charger for ABC audience shares. And its panellists are now celebrity brands in their own right.

So what made a specialist programme like Gruen such a phenomenal success with mainstream audiences?

Why do we collect autographs? Why do we wait patiently in long queues at book launches to get an author’s signature? Why do we accost celebrities at hotel lobbies, airport lounges, and cricket grounds to obtain that indecipherable (and yet coveted) squiggle, often scrawled mechanically without even a glance at the recipient or the surface being signed?

​Australia has a relationship with meat that runs deep - be it the backyard barbie, a sausage sizzle or a slab of steak. That’s why I was surprised, on my latest visit, to see a slew of “meatless meat” brands in the meat section of the local supermarket. 

A quick read on the internet suggested that a revolution could well be under way; over 12% of Aussies have primarily vegetarian diets, local set ups like the Alternative Meat Co. and Soul Fresh are registering strong growth in supermarkets and even the founder of Hungry Jacks -Burger King in Australia- has gotten onto the gravy train, betting big on plant-based meats.  

Of course, ‘meatless meat’ is the big story globally in 2019, with Beyond Meat valued at a bordering-on-ludicrous $8billion.  These products are designed to target meat eaters rather than vegans and vegetarians and such valuations are based on a large-scale shift to plant-based or cell-based meat - ‘grown not bred’.