Why I can never eat couscous again, by Mary McCartney
AS the daughter of two world-famous vegetarians, Mary McCartney admits she was left feeling like an outsider at school because she did not eat meat.
And she ate some dishes, such as roasted red peppers and couscous, so often in the 1980s that she steers away from them today.
But her parents Paul and Linda McCartney never forced her to be a vegetarian. ‘We were allowed to eat meat, if we were curious,’ Miss McCartney, 45, said at the Hay Festival.
She is grateful that in the years since she was growing up the range of vegetarian options on menus has increased.
Miss McCartney said being a vegetarian made it harder for her and her siblings during childhood although ‘we weren’t forced into it’. She added: ‘It was at the exact age where you want to fit in with all your friends. There weren’t really many options, it was just chips and beans, but now there are vegetarian options in school meals.
‘In a way it made me feel a little bit of an outsider. When I was at home it was per- fect… but when we would go out, it would be a bit of a different story.’
She said that meals out with friends used turn into an interrogation.
‘It would feel like I was being grilled about being vegetarian. It was quite difficult. I came away feeling like, “Leave me alone”,’ she said. ‘Now I don’t feel like that. But I do wish people would be open to eating more vegetarian options.’
Miss McCartney, like her mother, is a photographer who writes vegetarian cookbooks. Her own four children are vegetarian.
‘They don’t have to be,’ she said. ‘At home they are cooked for so they don’t really miss it [meat]. Maybe when they get older and they go away with friends then they might be more tempted.’
She added: ‘We don’t eat a lot of roasted red peppers or couscous – because I had a lot of that in the 80s.’