Dictating what we eat is utter madness

Like most sane people, I recognise the challenges posed by global warming, and I’d love the world not to go up in an apocalyptic cloud of smoke.

Do I think this gives the powersthat-be the right to decide what I can and cannot eat? No, I don’t. But I seem to be in an ever-thinning minority.

Every time I go on the Tube, I see adverts for vegan products that deploy the latest “science”, saying that if only we no longer ate animal products, we could save the planet.

The latest batch of dietary environmentalism came in the form of a major study last week commissioned by Norwegian think tank Eat and published in The Lancet, which found that food “is the largest source of environmental degradation”.

The solution? Current food attitudes and tastes must be razed to the ground, to be replaced by what sounds not much better than a prison diet. To be “sustainable”, “global” eaters, we must kiss goodbye to dairy, eggs and meat. Breakfast in this dystopian near-future

is porridge made with water, some seeds, fennel for lunch and roast cabbage for dinner. Binge on the bacon butties while you can, folks.

In wartime, individuals make enforced sacrifices for the sake of their country. Now we’re being asked to do so for an open-ended stab at maybe slowing the destruction of the planet. This is madness, and it’s not how humans work.

There needs to be less bandwidth given to working out what we can’t do and can’t have, and more effort put into coming up with a positive solution to climate change. We need innovation, not deprivation. In other words: cheeseburgers and choice, not seeds, seeds and more seeds.