I’m proud to be in the beetroot brigade after this meat mess

Here at Woods Towers, my husband and I have been “flexitarian” for some time now. This is nothing to do with Wanderluststyle gymnastic sexual proclivities; just that we don’t eat meat every day.

Has it done much for our energy levels? I have no idea, but it has worked wonders on our smug sense of superiority, which is always a boost.

This latest tainted meat scare is a case in point, with alien meat having made its way into ready meals.

What’s that, you say? Oh, alien as in unidentified, which is not the same as unidentifiable. So, rogue Roswell UFO leftovers haven’t found their way into the food chain, which is a public health relief, if a bit of a sci-fi shame.

However, more than a fifth of products tested by the Food Standards Agency were found to have contained undeclared animal DNA. Cow protein was the most common contaminant, followed by pig, chicken, sheep and turkey.

Some foods contained as many as four different species and, in one case, a lamb curry was made entirely of beef.

It’s all a bit icky. I can’t stop visualising a sluice tank filled with recovered meat gloop being flogged off cheap for nefarious purposes. You don’t get that when you stick to eating meat that looks like meat, which is why I only dine on grass-fed beef, happy dead chickens (aka free-range organic) and outdoor-reared pork.

Best of all, if you eat less meat, it’s no more expensive than the massproduced stuff. I reckon we eat meat twice a week, if that. We are not alone.

In 2016, about one in three people in the UK identified as flexitarian, which is to say predominantly vegetarian and occasionally eating meat or fish.

That is set to rise now the cleaneating bubble has well and truly burst, and the disaffected beetroot brigade are searching for a new food tribe.

When it comes to lifestyle, people like a label. Surely it’s only fair that the one on the packet tells the truth?