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Confessions of a part-time vegan By You Magazine - October 17, 2021 It may be the fastest growing food trend in the UK, but it’s not the easiest of diets especially if you’re catering for a family.
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The answer? Take a casual approach, says Anna Pursglove.
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Martin Poole Photography/Getty Images It’s my turn to order and I’m not sure which dish to choose. The other women around the table have closed their menus. ‘Do you know if the soup has milk in it?’ I mutter, apologetically.
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(I’ve never shaken off the idea, instilled in childhood, that it’s rude to make a fuss about food). The waiter misses my question.
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‘She’s asking if the soup has milk in it,’ my friend repeats, before adding ‘she’s an NQV.’ I’m clearly looking confused. ‘You’re a Not Quite Vegan,’ she explains, helpfully.
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‘You were talking about ordering pesto a minute ago and that’s got parmesan in it.’ She’s right. I’ve been toying with veganism for the past couple of years: curious but not fully committed.
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Maren Caruso/Getty Images If the stats are anything to go by then I’m not alone. In January a record 125,000 people (up 100,000 on the previous year) in the UK signed up for Veganuary ‒ a month of eating only plant-based food. Research from data analyst Kantar, however, suggests that number could be far higher – as many as ten times more people participated in Veganuary than signed up on the official website in 2019.
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It was a big enough deal for Tesco to support the campaign on radio and television, and Marks& Spencer created a month-long vegan meal plan to help shoppers stick to their pledge. Aldi, Asda and Iceland, meanwhile, all published vegan recipes on their websites.
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At the same time vegan takeaway orders reached an all-time high with Deliveroo reporting that the number of vegan restaurants on its app had doubled since the previous year. Brighton, Bristol, London, Manchester and Edinburgh headed the leader board for the most vegan orders.
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Restaurants are also responding to the nation’s vastly increased interest in animal-free foods. This autumn Pizza Express launched a plant-based menu at its restaurant in Aldwych, Central London, while also adding more vegan options to its menus nationwide.
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Getty Images/iStockphoto Of course, I’m working on the assumption that not everybody who eats plant-based food in January– nor everybody who walks into the Aldwych branch of Pizza Express – is a 100 per cent, committed vegan, because the truth is that for many it’s still not an easy lifestyle choice. Call me flaky. Call me defeatist.
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Call me an NQV if you like, but giving up all animal products… for good… with no exceptions… is hard. If you have other people to cook for it’s even harder. Let’s take the last point first: veganism and families.
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In my case, teenage kids. If it’s beige, ready-packed and stuffed full of sugar then bring it on, as far as they’re concerned. When you’re dealing with a 15-year-old who would drink Irn-Bru (we live in Scotland) with every meal if you let him, you’re not going to make much headway with dairy-free halloumi.
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Getty Images/iStockphoto Actually, vegan cheese really isn’t so bad these days but – unfortunately – during lockdown my husband and I bought a make-your-own vegan cheese kit which involved much soaking and mulching of cashews. We won’t dwell on the results but safe to say that I think we’ve put the kids off vegan cheese and cashew nuts for life.
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Even if we could convince them to give vegan foods a second chance, then what about eggs? Yes, I know there are a million other things you can cook that don’t involve eggs – but you can’t serve a teenager flaxseed on toast for breakfast, can you?
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Veganism can also be time-consuming. Not the cooking, necessarily, more the shopping, in that there are hidden animal products where you least expect them. You need infinite time (plus the visual acuity of a falcon) to read the small print on labels and, even then, the animal product might be part of the production process and therefore not appear.
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Does your cereal boast a D3 supplement? In that case it might well also contain lanolin, which comes from sheep’s wool. You know about the gelatin in sweets but how about the isinglass used to make wine appear clearer and brighter?
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This is also a type of gelatin and is made from the dried swim bladders of fish. Cheers! It doesn’t help that the omnivorous majority loves vegan-baiting.
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Nothing pleases non-vegans more than dropping the bombshell that a foodstuff previously held to be animal-free is actually not. The one doing the rounds at the time I became interested in a plant-based diet concerned avocados.
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The contention was that the use of bees in the farming process meant they weren’t vegan. However, since this is true of almost all fruit and vegetables, the claim didn’t stand. Getty Images/Science Photo Library This, though, does illustrate a broader problem for vegans in that they still aren’t that well liked.
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People take great pleasure in scoring points off them. It’s the culinary equivalent of being a traffic warden.
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Why should this be the case? That’s hard to pin down, given that so many of us are now – at least in principle – interested in veganism. Maybe it’s because, historically, vegans were seen as faintly ridiculous alt-lifestylers– the sort of people who might also knit their own yogurt.
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Possibly it’s because people feel inherently threatened when someone gives something up (anyone who has given up alcohol can relate to this). What is certainly true is that marketeers are still fighting shy of the V-word, preferring the terms ‘meat free’ or ‘plant based’.
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When McDonald’s started the rollout of its McPlant burger last month the chain appeared to avoid the word vegan despite the burgers being just that. All of which may lead you to ask why so many people are thinking about making the switch. A YouGov survey suggested that as much as five per cent of the population of Great Britain followed a vegan diet during at least part of January.
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Veganuary says that a significant number of those intended to continue with a more plant-based diet for the rest of the year. Aside from concerns about animal cruelty, polling of those interested in veganism also returns strong feelings about the impact of meat and dairy production on the environment. A plant-based diet needs only one third of the land needed to support a meat and dairy diet.
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The crops and water required to feed animals places a huge strain on the planet‒ on top of deforestation, habitat loss and species extinction. There is also a cost to human life in continuing to feed huge numbers of livestock as struggling populations are forced to grow cash crops for animal feed which threatens the security of their own food supplies.
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Viewed that way, the hardship associated with double checking to make sure your roasted nuts aren’t coated in milk powder seems trivial, to put it mildly. Aleksandr Zubkov/Getty Images Even previously vocal anti-vegans have changed their tune of late.
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Gordon Ramsay, who once proclaimed himself ‘allergic’ to vegans, has done a volte-face, telling YOU magazine just a few weeks ago that he reconsidered his stance after intense lobbying from his daughters. Earlier this year his 27 million TikTok followers were shocked to learn he was ‘turning vegan’. In reality this meant he was going to do plant-based cooking tutorials (the first got 13 million views) as opposed to being a full-timer.
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Welcome to the ranks of the Not Quite Vegans, Gordon. It’s fair to say that my NQV kitchen is not quite as impressive as Mr Ramsay’s.
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As previously stated, ease and practicality are where it’s at chez Pursglove, plus I don’t have millions of TikTok fans to impress. My current go-to is a German brand called Greenforce. There are plenty of good vegan burgers on the market (believe me, our family has taste-tested many) and as Greenforce comes in recyclable packets, there’s less of the plastic waste that comes with supermarket burgers.
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Unlike McDonald’s, Greenforce isn’t shy of the V-word ‒ although I was unsettled by its abundant use of the term ‘green meat’. I do appreciate the problems inherent in marketing vegan food but that doesn’t conjure up a great image.
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I was also perturbed by the packet instruction to ‘let the mixture swell in the fridge for 30 minutes’. Ideally, I don’t want my meat alternatives to be green or swollen.
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The brand’s burgers and meatballs (green balls?) do taste great, though, and that’s the most important thing. I have decided that I’m making my peace with being V-curious. It only seems to be vegetarians and vegans who are pilloried for not giving 100 per cent commitment to a lifestyle choice.
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If we were training to run a marathon, nobody would think less of us for having a few days off. I think we can all agree its better to cook more vegan meals than none at all. So if, like me, you’re an NQV, then here is my best advice.
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When you’re shopping and short of time (always, in my case), work on the assumption that if a food is vegan then it will say so– look out for common euphemisms such as ‘plant-based’, ‘green’ and ‘animal free’. It’s enough of a selling tool these days for food manufacturers to show off about it. When you’re cooking for a family, don’t beat yourself up.
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There will be times when you take the path of least resistance and just reach for the egg box. There will be other times when you simply aren’t thinking (cheddar cheese on the vegan burgers… doh!) and times when you genuinely didn’t know any better (I was, apparently, the only person on earth who wasn’t aware that there are anchovies in Worcestershire sauce).
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Here’s to being vegan ‒ part time or otherwise. Let’s raise a (gelatin-free) glass! ARE YOU READY TO SWITCH TO THE V SIDE Before you become an NQV, gen up on the nutritional pros and pitfalls
Will I get enough protein Given that healthy adults need only around 0.8g of protein per kg of body weight, then provided you eat foods such as lentils, beans, quinoa, tofu, seitan (a vegan meat alternative made from gluten) and tempeh (made from soya beans) then the answer is yes.
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Is jackfruit a good meat alternative Although its texture makes it a convincing alternative for pulled pork, jackfruit contains carbohydrate rather than protein, so you’ll need to get your protein elsewhere. Are vegans iron deficient Not usually. Although meat is a good source of iron, vegan diets typically contain high levels of vitamin C which improve the absorption of non-heme (plant-derived) iron.
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Vegans are no more likely than the population at large to be iron deficient. Are vegan burgers healthier Yes and no. While often containing low-cholesterol ingredients they also frequently have more salt and sugar added to them to enhance the taste.
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Whenever possible, opt for non-processed vegan foods. RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR
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