I thoroughly enjoy my varied diet, but I’d sign up for this without hesitation. A year is not an unacceptably long duration for an experiment, to me (and the skilled chef thing sounds just great).
Someone will prepare and pay for all of my food for a year? That’s a tempting offer without the money.
Sharks are vertebrates.
Assuming it was properly balanced nutritionally (or I had supplements to compensate). I’d eat the same meal every day for a year, for that price.
There seems to be an assumption that practically all the food that will be consumed throughout the twelve months will be prepared by the chef. Is that part of this hypothetical?
From my experience, having a vegan diet at home is relatively easy. It’s when I leave my home that it gets difficult.
Is the chef going to follow me when I go to restaurants, fast food places, sporting events, and various gatherings with friends and family, and prepare meals just for me? Am I going to be walking around with vegan take-out food to business meetings and family celebrations? Is the billionaire going to pay to have the chef accompany me on business trips, and on vacations and weekend recreational trips? Or do I just stay at home and count my money each month? Is that the idea?
For now, it looks like $100k isn’t enough for me to change my lifestyle for twelve months.
My thought is this. For a typical person, who breaks his fast and sups his last both at home, the chef will both prepare and serve breakfast and supper. He’ll also provide a lunch which the person may take with him. But the time away from home is obviously when it’s going to be easiest to cheat.
What you do away from home is on you, at least till it’s time to be tested for animal protein. And do not ask me how that works, because I don’t have an effing clue and thus will answer “the billionaire has a tricorder stolen from Mr. Spock.”
No, my eating habits are my own. If I choose to have a steak and potato dinner, or a salad with an awesome raspberry vinaigrette is simply none of his business. Using me as an “example to others” is exactly why I think this billionaire needs to shove it where the sun don’t shine. He’s saying “I know better than you how you should live your life,” and that doesn’t fly well with me. If he wants someone to be an example, hold himself up in the limelight, and go through 12 months of tests proving he ate no animal by-products, don’t use some other guinea pig.
Are you serious about the difference between buying a person’s habits and buying their time to perform a task? I guess the simplest way to say the difference, one is asking you to do something for him and he is willing to pay you for it, the other is asking you to be something for him and he is willing to pay you for it.
the dairy would be the hardest, but for money AND a chef? i’d make it work. soy milk is really not too bad at all as long as it’s cold. cheese would be the toughest to give up, i think.
Yeah, I’m surprised at how many current meat-eaters are saying that they would go vegan for a year. Not sure that they fully appreciate the extent of the changes to their diet and their social interactions.
Of course, it could be that they are just looking for a few payments of $5,000 for each month that they pass the test, and they can laugh about it when they decline to eat turkey at Thanksgiving, or the mashed potatoes, or the veggies with butter, or many of the desserts served at family gatherings.
All of the following deserts typically include animal products:
Apple pie (lard or butter, and sometimes egg white on upper crust)
Carrot cake (eggs, and cream and butter in the icing)
Brownies (eggs, butter)
Gingerbread (butter)
Pralines (butter)
Pumpkin pie (eggs, cream)
Key Lime pie (eggs and condensed milk)
And, ice cream and various desserts with cream or meringue, and pudding, shortbread, custard, trifle, mousse, and gelatin.
Of course, there are vegan recipes for most of the above, but is that what your friends and family are going to serve you when you have dinner at their home? FWIW, I often have fruit for dessert, but I don’t refuse cheesecake if it is offered to me.
(Also, I realize that my lists represent a small subset of foods worldwide, but there are very few places in the world where animal products are not part of the diet.)
Shit, i’d do it even if I had to cook my own vegan food. I’m an omnivore and I have my favorite barbecue carnivore spots (including Portuguese rodizio all-you-can-eat, yummmmm!) but I love good vegetarian, good vegan, good ANY kind of food. I wouldn’t do it for 10 years but I’d do it for a year, sure!
Y’know, it’s a running joke in Israel among the non-devout, that when asked whether we eat kosher (not “keep kosher,” it’s all in the wording!) the correct answer is “we eat kosher food, too.”
This pretty much sums up my attitude to this challenge, since I already eat vegan food, too. I’m not being forced to add anything to my diet, just survive a year without some stuff I normally eat. And if I get a personal chef to make sure I don’t make a mistake… where do I sign up? 
(mmm… falafel every day! Nom, nom :D)
ETA: I also checked the “I’d consider it for more money.” M.O.: ask for more money due to the hardship; accept the challenge as-is anyway if no more money is forthcoming, because, hey, home-made top-quality falafel every day! :))
That’s part of the reason I’m saying “no way”:
I bought a “club sandwich” today which included tuna and eggs. The “vegetable” sandwiches from the same place have ham and cheese. There aren’t any restaurants or bars within 5 subway stops where you can have a vegan meal. Forget about meals with my family.
It wouldn’t “merely” be a change of diet, it would have to be a radically different way of life, including BYOF family celebrations. And at least this time I have a job where you can BYOF, in the previous three asignments I couldn’t!
Hell yes. I don’t care what my food is, as long as it tastes good, and having a chef will ensure that.
I might even lose some weight, which would be an added bonus.
Yeah, I’d take the offer. I’d miss my bacon, hamburgers, steak, fish, chicken, turkey etc., but could certainly go a year without for such a big payoff.
I’m pretty sure a good chef can work wonders with tofu, eggplants, soy, chickpeas, etc… An exceptional one would probably be able to figure out how to make a non-dairy creamer that would be acceptable in coffee! 
Can’t speak for anyone else, but I realised the scale of the undertaking when I answered. And I’m quite omnivorous at the moment. It would be a sacrifice, but the reward is sufficient.
Regarding the problem of volition - I wouldn’t regard this as the rich guy playing games with my freewill - I’d see it as him wasting a chunk of money in my direction.
It’s only a year. I wouldn’t do it for ten years pro rata.
BTDT: “I’ll just enjoy it vicariously.”
Try olive oil.
I’d take it up for all of the reasons above and one more: weight loss. Seriously, I have always wanted a personal chef who would put together a custom menu for me so I didn’t have to think about every morsel of food. Here he is! For a whole year, I don’t have to worry about what I am eating.
I get that family dinners will be tough but I will just pack something to bring with me (or rather, my chef will)!
To give up eating delicious dead cow, hot wings and cheese would require more money than that, but I would be willing to go full-vegan for a year for the money and the chef.
I get the impact to my diet. I’m an omnivore, but cook primarily vegetarian and often vegan. Most of it is sheer laziness - handling meat means I have to wash my hands far more frequently than just before and after I start cooking. It also means that I have to handle it, which I find distasteful, and I have to smell it. I do NOT like the smell of raw meat or chicken.
Anyway, I’d miss the texture of meat occasionally, but given my current habits, not enough to mind giving it up for 100K.