A vast, joyous, meatless land

Some vegetarians won't cook in pots that have been used to cook meat. Some won't even eat off a washed plate that has had meat on it. But to top the lot, in Bombay, India, it is apparently becoming common for vegetarians to refuse to even sell their houses to anyone who eats meat. Real estate broker Norbert Pinto, explains that "some people are very strict." Jeez, and I thought I was a strict veggie.

But India is a land of extremes, so I'm told - I've never been there - and so it seems. The practice is turning whole neighbourhoods into vegetarian havens, with all the shops and restaurants refusing to serve or sell meat. One meat-loving resident complained: "If you step out to eat, there's nothing for miles because everything around is veggie."

Wow, it's like some hazy vision of utopia. I bet the trees are laden with fruit and everyone walks around with huge grins on their faces.

Milking it

The milk debate is hotting up. The dairy industry has issued its inevitable defence against the White Lies report, calling it "irresponsible, biased and inaccurate". This one will rumble on, I feel.

I had a hot choclate made with cows milk the other day. I feel quite bad, because I wrote a post the other day about how I never drink milk anymore. But a shop assistant in Fresh and Wild, a health food shop, no less, was handing out free cartons of organic milk and I just couldn't resist taking one. "I'll make a big hot choclate with it," I thought to myself.

However, the said hot choclate, while quite nice, left a bad taste in my mouth, quite literally. Maybe it was just psycological, after all this writing about milk, but it just tasted too much of animal. I don't think I'll finish the free carton, which is a bit of a waste, I know. So, if anyone wants half a pint of cow's milk and lives in east London and wants to come around to my house to get it, it's yours.

Pouting Prince of veggies

Prince has confirmed his return to form by scooping the much-coveted World's Sexiest Vegetarian title. The female category was won by someone called Kirsten Bell. Who is she? She's quite fine, though, not surprisingly. My vote, Natalie Portman, was a valiant runner-up. Sky is running a gallery of 52 sexy vegetarians (one for each week of the year, no less) on its website. It's well worth a trawl through if you like looking at pictures of posing celebrities who are both extremely attractive and vegetarian. If not, you might find it a bit annoying.

McDonald's droid does interview

Did anyone see the McDonald's UK boss on Channel 4 News last night (go here and click the 'watch the report' link)? It was quite incredible. He sat there like a pre-recorded dummy repeating in a monotone voice the same line to every question - that "There's a lot of curiosity around the brand and that can lead to myths and what I'm trying to do is run the business in an increasingly transparent way and allow people to separate the facts from the fiction." After the third time, the reporter, exasperated by his inability, or his refusal, to say anything else, said: "You just answered three questions in exactly the same way. Can you give me one specific 'myth' you've had to rebuff?" Incredibly, he just said the same line again in response. Talk about a frank and open discussion.

By the way, Heather Mills has pulled out of the milk thing. Probably a wise move, for her and the anti-milk event.

The downfall of a do-gooder

Poor Heather Mills ex-McCartney. They really don't like her. The press has been less than sympathetic towards her since the news that she was splitting from husband and aging global megastar Paul McCartney. Does this have anything to do with all her animal rights campaigning, I wonder? Animal rights, and vegetarianism for that matter, are strangely thorny issues, as I discussed in an earlier post. Most people, while willingly cooing over pictures of fluffy bunnies, like eating meat and wearing perfume and don't like people telling them it's wrong. Do-gooders, they're called, and they're held in lower esteem than drug-crazed rock-stars, beer-guzzling comedians, or even philandering former nurses. In fact, it's a sure fire way to get yourself a bad name. Better to snort cocaine and look pretty.

Is all meat bad meat?

I met a guy the other day who told me he'd just started eating meat again after 15 years as a vegetarian. His reasons were almost understandable. He said he'd originally given up meat because he was appalled at the way the meat industry treated animals, both for the lack of animal welfare, but principally because he realised it couldn't be good for him to eat it, pumped full as it was with steroids and mad cow disease and the like. But now, what with the organic revolution sweeping the land, he says organic, free-range meat is available at his local corner store. So there's no need to be veggie.

I asked him what it felt like eating meat again after so long and he just grinned and said: "Great."

If this is a new trend, and I suspect it is, to some extent, then are we, the hardcore vegetarians, to embrace it or not. I mean, surely it's better to have a healthy meat industry than an unhealthy one?

I'm torn on this, as usual. My logic says, yes, that's true. But my (ir)rationale says no, just stop it. Leaves those animals alone. Eat vegetables and tofu ...

...

... After much thought, I'll side with my logic as far as the general situation goes, but with my instinct on an individual level. (Jeez, I should be a Liberal Democrat with that kind of sitting-on-the-fence ability.)

As far as veggie quandaries go, this one made me chuckle. The author writes: "Running is not vegan because every time I go running in the late Spring/early Summer I end up swallowing an insect."

It's true. But there you go, I'm not vegan.

Ooh I say!

Here's a quote and a half, from none other than the ravishing Pamela Anderson:

"For your best orgasm ever, go vegetarian."

She said it as part of something she was doing for National Orgasm Day, not National Vegetarian Week, which makes it even better.

Also in the name of Orgasm Day, here is a saucy little video.

In fact, am I missing something? All the National Orgasm Day links on the web seem to involve vegetables? Can anyone fill me in?

:-)

Things not to say to a veggie ...

With National Vegetarian Week just a few days away, (cue hushed excitement and drum rolls), the vegetarian dating agency (!) website veggieromance.com has revealed the most common and irritating comments ever encountered by vegetarians, according to their "thousands of vegan and vegetarian members".

So here, to get in the spirit of NVW, I shall trying responding to the top ten comments "most likely to get a veggie's goat" ...

1. What do you eat?
I refer you to my article in the May 2006 issue of BBC Good Food magazine, in which I explain fully and exactly what I do and do not eat.

2. How do you get your protein?
By eating it. Sorry, I know what you mean. By eating protein-rich foods. I'm not sure which ones, but I know I eat them.

3. You don't look like a vegetarian.
Yes I do, and you know it.

4. I'm vegetarian too ... apart from chicken ... and fish ... but they don't count.
That's up to you. I eat cheese, so there.

5. You must be tempted by a bacon sandwich?
Are you mad? If I was hungry I might like a sandwich, but without any smelly bacon in it.

6. If it weren't for us (carnivores) there wouldn't be any animals.
You what? Are you saying all animals would stop breeding if nobody wanted to eat them? If there were no carnivores, I suspect there would be more animals, not less. Unless you decided to kill them all anyway.

7. I'm not a vegetarian, but I could never eat a dog or a horse, that's barbaric ...
Interesting. Selective compassion.

8. Don't worry, you'll grow out of it.
I doubt it.

9. Here's some lettuce.
Thanks, what's that for?

10. Why?
Because the thought of eating meat makes me feel sick.

Staying off the white stuff

Every vegetarian has been asked, I'm sure, after telling someone that they don't eat meat: "But you drink, milk, right?" The inference is, you may be a bit weird, not eating meat, but don't tell me you're one of those freaks who doesn't even drink milk. As milk is not strictly against my vegetarianism, I usually say, "yes", just to keep the person from having to raise his eyes at me and suddenly find himself on a different place in time where he can no longer even speak to me, I'm so far out there.

But the truth is, I've hardly drunk milk at all since I was about 10. I mean, it's not the dreaded repulsive flesh of meat, and if I'm in a hotel or a friend's house and there's a particularly tempting bowl of cereal on offer and there's only cows milk available, I'll eat it. For sure. But generally, my mum gave it up for me when I was a kid, and now it just doesn't taste right.

We started on soya milk way back then because my brother had a bit of eczema. It cleared up pretty-much as soon as we stopped drinking milk and never came back. So we stuck to the soya stuff. Me and my brothers hated it at first, and I used to jump at any opportunity to pour cow's milk over my cereal, especially the creamy bit. But now it just tastes thick and a bit sickly.

My mum's rationale was quite simple (aside from the miraculous effect on my brother's eczema): cow's milk is designed for cows, she said. And it seems medical opinion is beginning to support her long-held suspicions about the white stuff, with a campign against milk by the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation gathering pace.

But is campaigning against milk a step too far? Are we pounding regular people too hard telling them that milk is bad for them? I mean, it's not like they can just go and start eating tofu and chick peas to get their calcium - that's just for beardy weirdos. No, they're stuck. Isn't it better they drink milk than not drink it, if we're not to drive them into a corner where all that's left to eat is apples and potatoes and they freak out and go back to burgers and coke?

Heather Mills-McCartney, who is fronting the anti-milk campaign, doesn't seem too bothered about this possibility. And maybe she's right. I mean, if milk really is bad for you, shouldn't people know? I've also heard it said by conspiracy theorists that the milk industry has known for years that its product is not the superfood-that-every-child-needs it's trumped up to be, but has kept it quiet, for obvious reasons. If that's true, shouldn't it be exposed?

However, Mrs Mills-McCartney's insistence on supporting so many antagonistic causes is beginning to result in a noticeable backlash against her. So, to avoid such a fate, I'll stay down off my high horse (I wouldn't want to become unpopular, now, would I?), and conclude thus: milk is not very nice, it comes out of a cow and is designed to make baby cows grow big very quickly, bigger than humans. However, what else are you going to put on your cornflakes? At least we don't have to kill the cows to get it. And you've got to die of something, right? Right?

In case you're interested, sweetened soya milk is nice when you get used to it. Really.

Toothless tale

What chance have my teeth got? I'm English and vegetarian. We all know what the world, well Americans at least, think about the English and their bad teeth (I mean, gee, we didn't spend our childhoods with our heads strapped into huge grin-fixing braces, how disgusting), but now some ingenious Scottish scientists have deduced, from roasting ratatouille, that being vegetarian is bad for your teeth!

The conclusion is foolproof because, of course, all vegetarians eat is a diet of pure ratatouille (except for the occasional lasagne when they go out), and only a vegetarian would dream of roasting a ratatouille, as opposed to stewing it.

If you haven't bothered to click on the link and read the story, let me explain. Roasting ratatouille makes the vegetables more acidic than if you stew it. And acid is bad for your teeth. Therefore ... well, it's obvious isn't it?

Flawed as the research obviously is, it was a good enough story to make the pages of the Scotsman and the Daily Mail. Vegetarian scare-mongering is always good for a few column inches, get those half-hearted do-gooders a little jittery. Oh my god, my teeth! Well, I put myself, and my two brothers, also life-long vegetarians, forward as evidence (at least as good evidence as the Scottish scientists) that being veggie isn't bad for your teeth. One filling between us in about 90 years (combined ages). And never a chunck of meat chewed. So there.

My BBC Good Food article

As I've already mentioned, the venerable BBC Good Food magazine published an article by me this month (in the May issue), all about how I was brought up as a vegetarian, and whether I should bring my own kids up as vegetarians. They cut down what I wrote quite a bit to fit it all on one page, and called it "Should my kids be veggie" so they could, I suspect, use a picture of my daughter, Lila, but here's the orginial text, as I gave it to them...

I was born in the early 1970s. My parents had long hair, were permanently blissed out, and, as with many other hippies, they didn't eat meat. So when I arrived, they decided to call me Adharanand, (which is Sanskrit for Eternal Bliss), and bring me up as a vegetarian. I guess it must have been the natural thing to do at the time.

But jump forward thirty-odd years to the early twenty-first century, and I'm a pretty unusual specimen in this country a person who has never eaten meat.

But what is it like, for someone like me, to live in a world inhabited by meat eaters?

Well firstly, there are all the questions. Are you ever tempted to try it? What about things like oysters, can you eat those? If you were lost in the desert and the only thing you had to eat was some meat, would you do it? Maybe I can clear some of these up now.

Believe it or not, I have never been tempted. Meat, to me, is, quite simply, repulsive. I should point out that I don't hate all carnivores, or even feel that eating meat is wrong. As someone who has not made a conscious decision to be vegetarian, I don't feel I can take any moral high ground on the issue. But no amount of juicy descriptions of meat, and people have tried, can sow even a flutter of doubt. For me it would be just as difficult to tuck into a slice of lamb, for example, as it would be for a normal person to eat a piece of human meat.

As for what is, and what isn't, meat, this can be tricky. I once ate a lemon ant in the Amazon jungle. Was that meat? Over the years, I've developed my own personal definition of vegetarianism according to my own irrational meat-avoiding impulses. So, oysters are out. Smoky bacon crisps, even if they don't contain any smoky bacon, are out. Eggs are out, except as a minor ingredient. Then they're in, but best avoided. Lemon ants are in, but only very rarely. You see, it's a tricky business for me.

For anyone cooking for a vegetarian, I'd say avoid eggs, unless youre sure your guest eats them. In fact, avoid anything that you feel is borderline vegetarians can be very fussy.

If I ever turn up somewhere for dinner and the person has forgotten I'm vegetarian, I usually try to make as little fuss as possible, accepting that for them I'm the one being awkward. But on no account will I go as far as actually eating any meat. I was once invited to eat with a family in Morocco and language difficulties meant I ended up with a plate of couscous and meat. I guess some vegetarians would, in such a circumstance, hold their nose and eat it. But for me, that would be too much. So I had no choice but to nibble the couscous around the edge and endure the puzzled looks of my hosts.

I did once accidentally eat some meat. I had ordered a veggie burger in a greasy spoon cafe, which is always risky, and they brought me a real, meat burger. I was instantly suspicious of the smell, the texture, but sometimes these veggie burgers are pretty good imitations, so I'm told. After numerous confirmations from the waitress that it wasn't meat, I ate it and ended up sick in bed for four days. So, if I was lost in the desert, I'd probably opt not to eat the meat.

Despite the pitfalls of my life as a vegetarian among meat eaters, Ive grown to realise that there are few places as accommodating as Britain.

I've travelled on all the six major continents, and the worst place I've ever been for vegetarian food has to be Spain. Only in the tapas bars of Andalucia could you find a menu with five hundred different options and none of them vegetarian, (according to my definition, that is, as there is usually a Spanish omelette).

What is worse, they often give you a complimentary dish when you order a drink and are offended if you dont eat it. They are also offended if you pre-empt the gift by asking for one sin carne. In my experience, it's best to find a bar that doesnt give free tapas, and stay there.

The depth of understanding of vegetarianism in Spain was summed up by a lady I met in Seville who told me that her friend had become vegetarian and had turned green, literally. When I politely pointed out that I wasn't green, she said it was because I had been lying in the sun.

So, for all my experiences as a lifelong vegetarian, should I bring my children up as vegetarian? Although this may seem like a tricky question, the idea of my two young daughters eating meat has hardly entered my head. I wouldn't know what to do, for a start. My partner hasnt eaten meat since she was 18, so she wouldnt be much better. But more than that, it just wouldn't feel right. Being vegetarian is part of who I am. It would be almost like deciding to bring your children up in another religion.

A trickier question, in my mind, is how to keep them vegetarian. I mean, if one day they choose to eat meat, that is fine by me, but Id rather they didn't. My parents were successful, if that is the right word, in that neither me nor my two brothers ever wanted to eat meat. Being vegetarian always felt normal to us, which I think was key. I had two school friends who, impressed by my exotic packed lunches, decided to become vegetarian. However, their parents were reluctant to accommodate them and just cooked veggie burgers every day. Needless to say, my friends ended up eating meat again, which is probably what their parents intended.

In our house it was different. My parents, with the opposite motivation, used to threaten to buy us fish and chips if we didn't eat our lentil bake. Nothing made us eat up quicker!