I threatened to eat a waiter’s kids. Now that’s real veganism

WE VEGANS can be wildly annoying. My veggie girlfriend, upon being served nut roast on Christmas Day, whined abjectly: ‘ Hmm. I hope it doesn’t contain walnuts. I’m allergic.’ Gah! My own most militant moment came just before Christmas, at my local Indian restaurant. I ordered vegan samosas but when they arrived, and I cut one open, I could smell dead lamb. I summoned the waiter. ‘Would you,’ I asked him, ‘like me to come to your house and eat your children?’ ‘ Um, no,’ he said, looking very frightened indeed. I refused to pay the bill, and as I left I gave him a death stare.

Granted, it was an extreme reaction. So t oo were t he death threats lobbed at chef Laura Goodman, owner of a couple of Italian restaurants in Shropshire, who boasted she’d ‘spiked a vegan a few hours ago’. The result was a social media furore with vegans, to quote one headline, ‘ going bananas’ (oh, hahaha).

But here’s the thing: we are forced to shout loudly, because even intelligent people seem to have no grasp of the issues.

There was a debate on Radio 4’s PM on Wednesday, when restaurant critic Giles Coren wondered why the default setting of people who profess to love animals is to kill humans.

A writer in the Left-wing press also opined: ‘ When millions around the world don’t have enough to eat, there’s something obscene about t hreatening to kill over a pizza topping. Nobody’s body is that much of a temple.’ It’s shocking that it still needs to be pointed out that millions around the world are starving simply because of our addiction to meat: an acre of cereal produces five times more protein than an acre used for meat production. If anyone’s condemning human beings to death, it’s the meat mob.

But perhaps a less obvious misapprehension is that veganism is somehow all about our health. Vegans are moved to threaten chefs (or the waiter’s children) because we care about the wellbeing of farm animals, not ourselves. For me, the fact that even three slices of bacon a week may be a factor in breast cancer in older women, as reported last week, doesn’t even enter the equation of why I choose not to eat animals.

Meat eaters have no concept of the difficult path the half a million vegans in the UK tread in order to practise what we preach. We can be found peering at the small print on a bottle of wine, just to make sure it’s vegan (egg white, gelatine, milk and even fish are used in processing).

We are discriminated against, constantly: I was forced to sit next to someone eating chicken on a flight to Islamabad, while the hostess confiscated my G&T! I tried to clutch it to my breast, Patsy Stone-fashion. We have to sleep beneath down duvets in hotels, sit on leather seats in taxis, handle £5 notes that contain animal fat.

YOU will never, ever catch me licking an envelope, just in case: my love of animals was sparked, aged five or so, by the cartoon horse in Animal Farm being carted off to the glue factory.

You could argue, well, why did the fusspot vegan party visit an Italian in the first place, and not choose a vegan establishment? Trust me, in the frozen North, I’ve yet to find one near me.

We are not even safe in our friends’ homes. I was asked to a New Year’s Eve dinner, and was tucking into the lentils prepared by my hostess when I could suddenly smell bacon. I actually vomited on to my plate. Needless to say, I’ve not been asked back…