This article appeared as the Climate Action Column in the Harborough Mail on July 25th, 2024
Firstly, if you’re reading this, you’re probably thinking this will be a preachy vegan telling me he’s morally superior. Well, I’m not going to disappoint you! But what I do hope you get out of this is to recognise that you don’t have to be a tie-dye wearing, barefoot-hippy wandering around saying peace and love to have a positive impact on the environment or the billions of animals we choose to exploit (I said I’d be preachy!).
But let’s start with some myth busting: meat alternatives-“ultra processed muck, tastes like cardboard, so incredibly bad for you,”-these are just a few of the reviews you will encounter when rocking up to a BBQ with your Beyond Meat burger in hand, despite the fact that for 99% of these meat eaters, their only experience of meat alternatives is a veggie sausage they tried in the early 2000s, and they’ll happily tarnish all meat alternatives with the same salty brush. That’s a bit like someone trying a Nokia phone 25 years ago and assuming an iPhone would be the same as that.
Now, to tackle the “ultra processed muck” argument: it's certainly true these meat alternatives are not a health food, but they are not made to be. Anyone who’s watched “Supersized Me” will know that McDonald's burgers are not a health food, and meat alternatives should be judged accordingly. However, interestingly, in almost every scenario, a meat alternative is more healthy than its meat counterpart. And more shocking still, processed meat products like salami, bacon, or sausages are a group 1 carcinogen, along with tobacco and asbestos. Does that sound like something you want to be putting in your body?
“Tastes like muck” is the easiest argument to counter, because they don’t; they taste amazing. On a few occasions now, I’ve had to ask a waiter to confirm what I’m eating is in fact vegan, as the taste is a little too convincing for my liking! Beyond Meat burgers, Richmond meat-free sausages (the unfrozen ones), and This Isn’t Chicken Pieces, or any of the VFC range should leave you more than satisfied. And in picking one of these, you are causing more knock-on benefits than you can imagine. For instance, they have much lower saturated fat and no cholesterol, they are also more environmentally friendly, using fewer resources, and they produce considerably less greenhouse gas emissions. The other glaring benefit is that no animal has had to be killed for you to have something on your plate. Oh, and before someone says, “what about cheese?” Well, thankfully, that too has been solved now: Cathedral City Plant Based cheese. You’re welcome.
The reason I am speaking about these and not telling you to eat purely a wholefoods diet, despite the fact this has been proven time and time again to be by far the best diet for a human to eat, is because of the very fact we are all human, and we all succumb to the same desires. As a vegan I suspect I eat very similar meals to any meat eater. I'll eat pastas, burgers, fajitas, shepherd’s pie, curries, stir fry, and they are all even more delicious than they were before. My best advice is to decide what dinner you want, and then Google a plant-based version, as I can assure you it will have been done.
And I just want to leave you on this: veganism isn’t a radical or extreme movement. Our fundamental belief is that we should reduce suffering where we can. If you consider yourself a kind person and want to do good in the world, that can start with the simple act of making a choice for kindness three times a day.
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