Vegans are a people both widely admired and hated. That is the conclusion of a report earlier this week, one that found that shoppers who opt for meat alternatives elicit fear and contempt from others. According to researchers from the University of Vaasa in Finland, who interviewed 3,600 people from four European countries, including the UK, people who choose plant-based options are perceived as ‘worthy of admiration’, yet at the same time their vegan lifestyle also arouses feelings of ‘envy, fear, contempt and anger.’
Before vegans let such news swell their heads – knowing now that they’re seen as both awesome and awful – further research, published in the Times today, should bring them back down to Earth. A report by Oxford University has concluded that the vegan diet adopted by many people in the West today can be more detrimental to the planet than the real thing. Researchers found that substitute or ersatz products, such as oat milk, almond milk, veggie burgers and imitation meat, were bad for the environment. In particular, they found that almond milk was worse for the planet than dairy milk, as was fake bacon worse than real bacon.
The cost of a posh vegan diet has long been obvious to anyone who has seen the relevant fare on sale in supermarkets. The cost to the climate of an upmarket plant-only diet has also been known for some time. Almonds have long been one of the worst offenders, requiring huge amounts of water, pesticides and fertiliser to grow, and this is before they are flown halfway round the world to arrive here in the UK. In terms of cost, land use, water use, nutrients, greenhouse gases and reducing disease impact, the researchers at Oxford University concluded that the vegan diet in its popular incarnation today is not advisable. Worst of all, for its carbon footprint and one’s health, is lab-grown meat, which many hope to be a vision of the future.
Does this latest news make vegans the bad guys now? Not quite, says the report. Vegans should stick to eating beans, peas and soya and merely forego food that pretends to be from animals. It’s a boring but sensible conclusion. And if we really must paint any demographic to be the bad guys here, it’s those going vegan for fashionable purposes – the almond milk-drinking poseurs with their curated diets who assume a lifestyle to differentiate themselves from the hoi polloi.
As the Oxford University research implies, a pedestrian, unsophisticated meat-free diet is ultimately better for the planet. Most of those who forego eating meat, as I have done since 1996, simply reiterate this message when asked about the issue. Animals raised for consumption take up a disproportionate amount of land, eat too many plants themselves and emit too many noxious gases as a result of their prodigious vegetable consumption.
I emphasise ‘when asked’ because there persists in the imagination of a minority a stereotype that those who don’t eat meat are puritanical scolds and proselytising bores. This cliché belongs some time back in the 1980s, when vegetarianism and especially veganism were indeed minority lifestyle choices, and when many who practised such abstinence did resemble the hippy Neil from The Young Ones (motto: ‘vegetable rights and peace’).
I have never once sought to ‘convert’ omnivores, who to their general credit, mostly stopped asking vegetarians ‘why don’t you eat meat?’ about 20 years ago. Not eating animals is not considered an ‘alternative’ lifestyle choice now. The only grief vegetarians have been subjected to over the years has been that from militant vegans. Much like some gays way back used to distrust bisexuals on account of being ‘half-hearted’ or pusillanimous in some way, hardcore vegans distrust non-political vegetarians for our barbaric consumption of cheese and eggs.
Vegans shouldn’t be vilified
But again: this is a minority. For the most part, vegans are neither saints nor sinners, neither to be resented for their presumed moral superiority, nor condemned now for their misguided or ignorant consumer choices. People forego eating animals for a whole host of reasons. A squeamish aversion to killing animals was mine at first. The environmentalism issue turned out to be an unexpected by-product.
Vegans shouldn’t be vilified. In one respect, they should be absolutely admired: for their self-discipline. Avoiding all animal products in your life, including honey or leather, takes willpower. Some omnivores remark to me that they could never give up meat. I’m the same with cheese. And life without a poached egg and real cup of milky tea in the morning would also be a challenge too far.
Vegans deserve understanding and vegetarians merit tolerance. But the less said for lazy and superficial so-called ‘flexitarians’, an utterly meaningless euphemism for ‘people who regularly and actually eat meat’, the better.
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