No, I won’t rejoin that pale-faced, snooty assembly of lettuce-nibblers
That’s precisely what happened to friends of ours a few weeks ago.
Thankfully, Geraldine, our hostess that evening, is a brilliant cook and was able to rustle something up for said veggie in next to no time. “I’m so sorry. I feel terrible. I should have asked if you had any dietary requirements.”
Yes, and she should have bothered to warn you, the inconsiderate witch, I thought to myself. But apology from her came there none.
That’s what I can’t stand about vegetarians, their sense of superiority. How dare they look so pompous and aloof? I exclude those who forgo meat for religious reasons, but most vegetarians give themselves a bad name.
You aren’t better than us, I want to scream at them on the rare occasion I drop by one of those meat-free cafés. Perhaps the fact that these establishments are patronised entirely by the idle middle-class explains the prevailing sense of self-righteousness.
Recent converts to the veggie cult can be the worst. I am tired of feeling self-conscious in restaurants when ordering meat in front of them. I’m not pretending factory-farmed animals are always kept in the nicest conditions, but then I can’t pretend I lose sleep about the lives of prawns either. How big can their brains be inside their tiny little heads?
I mention this informal supper party because last week Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has recommended that we all switch to a vegetarian diet to help stop climate change.
It just so happens that Pachauri is, as you might have guessed, a vegetarian himself. The event was organised by Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), a lobby group with an over-representation of vegetarians in its membership, one suspects.
Pachauri’s argument is essentially that meat production accounts for more greenhouse gases than transport and he proposes we all give up meat for one day a week to start with and then cut back even further. He also suggests indirect meat taxes which are right up CIWF’s street. They want annual government targets for meat production and consumption, can you believe?
Turn off your kettle at the socket for the planet? Good idea. Insulate your roof? Fine, no problem. Use public transport more? Agreed. But all start turning veggie? Forget it. Pachauri is, as you again guessed, Indian. It was 17th century travellers’ accounts of the sub-continent that began to affect Europeans’ ethical attitudes to flesh-eating. The fact that the travellers’ tales exaggerated both the extent of Indian vegetarianism and the healthiness of the population did not alter their impact.
Take Paul McCartney, the ageing Beatle, for example. The music legend, whose four-year-old daughter, Beatrice, is vegan, told a magazine this month: “I’d be happier if everyone was vegetarian. The planet would be better off for it.”
Maybe, maybe not. But what about what’s good for Beatrice? Giving up meat and dairy has been linked to anorexia and other eating disorders in teenage girls. Lack of vitamin B12, found mainly in meat, eggs, dairy and fish, can cause brain damage.
Most vegans, and some non-meat-eaters, have to supplement their diet with pills.
I speak from some experience. I had become revolted by meat when I was about 12 once someone at school told me what sausages were made of.
Despite my horror, I carried on eating meat, making a huge effort not to associate sausages with pigs or hamburgers with cows. But once I’d left home (where everybody, being of farming stock, ate meat and lots of it), I felt keen to assert my new-found independence by taking the veggie route.
This was no mere phase having it lasted nearly four years. And for most of that time I secretly looked down on people who ate meat, considering them Neanderthals. I fantasised that I was doing wonderful things for my health by rejecting meat.
The truth was, my mind was playing tricks on me. I was telling myself one thing while my body was telling me something else. I had put on lots of weight, I felt tired all the time and my face had lost all its colour.
Then I came home one night after a few days away to discover my flat had a minor mouse infestation. Admittedly, my vegetarianism had never led me so far as to give up leather shoes, but confronted by these disease-ridden beasties scuttling around the kitchen floor, my vegetarianism never crossed my mind. The little pests had to die: poison was too good for them.
And it was only when I had to throw one of their miserable little carcasses out in the rubbish (with a considerable sense of pride, I confess) that it sank in. For all my efforts to convince myself that I was nature’s best friend, the fact was I couldn’t care less about this miniature rat. I just wanted him dead and not leaving his droppings everywhere. Which led me to think: if I didn’t care about mice, why should I pretend fish were in my social circle? Or piglets or ducklings, for that matter?
Are all creatures equal after all? Aren’t there natural hierarchies in the food chain, and isn’t it people that count? That led me straight to the bacon shelf in my local convenience store and I’ve never looked back.
ALL manner of fleshy deliciousness has passed my lips since, from sirloin to salami to schnitzel to more exotic meats like crocodile and warthog in Africa, snake in Taiwan and pan-fried horsemeat in Hungary. Tasty they all were, too — and healthy, in moderation.
That’s not to say I don’t care two hoots about animals. Proud carnivore that I am, like you I have no desire to spend my free time in the local abattoir or battery hen facility.
But isn’t the reason for our squeamishness that most of us are far removed from the products we buy at the supermarket?
One of the many benefits of the Industrial Revolution is that someone else produces my food and distributes it to a central purchasing point near my home, leaving me more time to concentrate on something else.
This stands in contrast to large areas of the under-developed world where poverty makes vegetarianism mandatory and where animals do work rather than provide food.
Giving up meat — or radically reducing my consumption — would not kill me, I agree. Meat is not nicotine. There would be no withdrawal symptoms. There is no impending ban.
I can’t quite see the day when rain-soaked meat junkies guiltily chew pepperoni in office doorways. Giving up meat would not call for any stampede into soya — any massed, shuddering retreat from an unacceptable habit.
At the same time, I’ve no desire to rejoin that band of pallid, humourless, judgmental souls still picking at their lettuce.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
