I’m happy to eat less beef, but ‘meat analogues’ are a step too far

What’s happened to real meat? According to a report in the shopkeepers’ rag The Grocer, sales of “meat substitutes” are up – with the likes of veggie burgers and meat-free sausages leading the pack. Analysts say it’s because a quarter of us have decided to go “flexitarian” – that is, eat less meat without going the whole hair shirt and giving it up altogether.

Well, there’s no arguing with that motivation. As a planet, we need to eat less meat. A study released last year by researchers at Oxford University confirmed what we already knew but didn’t really like to think about as we tucked into another steak – that the amount of lovely beef, pork, chicken and lamb (not to mention the other meaty options) we enjoy isn’t very healthy and is about as environmentally friendly as sending a courier from London to Bristol just to deliver a tin of baked beans. This did actually happen: I opened my front door to a helmeted man in leathers who handed over the posh department store paper bag between finger and thumb with the words, “They must really like you”, before roaring off back down the M4. The tin, incidentally, turned out to have a large dent in it.

Now, I love baked beans. But as for vegetarian sausages, meat-free burgers and the rest of the dismal junk that’s terrifyingly known in the business as “meat analogues” (a phrase George Orwell would surely have swiped for 1984, if only he’d thought of it), ugh. A quick, shuddering glance at the ingredients list on a packet of vegetarian sausages revealed rehydrated textured soya protein, soya protein concentrate and a stabiliser called methyl cellulose. Yum, not. To paraphrase the words of broadcaster Anthony Bourdain on margarine: no, I don’t know what they are either – but they sure aren’t food.

In fact, the likes of veggie burgers are the rubbish tribute bands of food, the “Someone Like Adele” of the supermarket aisles. OK, if you have a moral objection to animal consumption and don’t care much about food, I can see ( just) why they might appeal, for the protein content if nothing else. But if you are just cutting down on eating meat, it makes no sense at all. It’s like downloading Bjorn Again when you could buy Abba: The Album.

I’ve nothing against vegetarians, mind. I gave up meat for a decade in my teens and twenties – although I did eat fish, which I suppose made me a pescatarian, a word right up there with flexitarian, Tofurky and Fakin’ Bacon on the wince scale. And these days I’m more likely to serve up British asparagus with a poached egg, a pile of Jersey Royals and a puddle of melted butter than bangers and mash.

But faux meat? Forget it. Let’s hear it for real food – animal or vegetable. Even the dude food lover Richard Turner, who introduced the flesh-eating festival that is Meatopia to our shores five years ago, is now planning a vegetable-focused love-in. I suggested he called it “Veg Out”, but he’s not having it – so Plant Life it is.

Food writers like Yotam Ottolenghi and our own Diana Henry are the new flexitarian food champions, suppliers of a cornucopia of recipes for vegetables – some of them even include a smidgen of meat. Like the blushing understudy thrust into the leading role, veggies are the heroes of the hour. Just never in a burger.