Western Morning News (Saturday)
There’s no substitute for the real thing
Veganuary? Bridgwater and West Somerset Conservative MP Ian Liddell-Grainger tells Defra Secretary and Redruth and Camborne MP George Eustice in an open letter that he can’t wait to see the back of it
DGlancing at the calendar I note that we are but a week away from the end of the most detested month of the year – Veganuary.
Indeed if you care to step outside your door and cock an ear on the 31st you may (if the wind’s in the right quarter) catch the faint sounds of celebrations chez LiddellGrainger as we leave 31 days of nonsense behind us.
This hyped-up salute to veganism is an opportunity for every piously self-righteous non-meat eater to seize every opportunity to preach and pontificate on the evils of being carnivorous, often regardless of the facts or the science.
I am a tolerant sort, as you know, George, but my patience with the born-again vegans now runs out on approximately January 2. By which time I have had enough of their beliefs being disseminated across all the media and often delivered in terms designed evidently to shame the rest of us into changing our ways.
And don’t get me started on the way that milk is perpetually demonised with followers of the True Path praising instead the “milk alternatives” derived from almonds, oats or (for all I know) lichen.
Let’s get this straight: the only thing these products have in common with milk is their appearance. They all look vaguely milky to a greater or lesser extent. Substitutes they are not.
But only once have I heard a vegan concede that her ersatz ‘milk’ of choice was considerably less nutritious than the real thing and she therefore needed to top up her diet with the appropriate supplements. Yet what greater demonstration could there be of the fact that cow’s, goat’s or even sheep’s milk are so nutritionally superior to anything squeezed from plant material – and don’t even get me going on the environmental toll exacted by the intensive soy bean farming which provides the source of so much.
What concerns me is the effect this all has on young and impressionable minds. Those of us who are somewhat longer in the tooth have got the requisite knowledge and experience to take a view and weigh up the pros and cons.
Children who are fed an unremitting diet of vegan propaganda haven’t, and are likely to grow up to believe that a vegan diet is entirely natural and nutritious. I only hope cures have been discovered for osteoporosis by the time they reach their 40s otherwise they may well find themselves looking at some very worrying X-ray images.
I really believe it is time we followed the example of certain other countries and clamped down on the descriptions applied to vegan products. There is no such thing as ‘vegan bacon’: bacon is cured pork meat. A ‘vegan sausage’ can claim some pedigree because Glamorgan sausages have always been meat-free but not a lot of people know that (as Trump was so fond of putting it) and most people regard a sausage as a meat product.
Which brings me to another point: how come the vegans are so keen to name their foodstuffs after the very things they purport to detest? You would think they were so fanatical about their diets they would never permit the word ‘bacon’ ever to pass their lips.
Doubtless they have picked up a few recruits in Veganuary.
Doubtless, equally, the month has seen an equal number of recent vegan converts concluding a meatfree diet isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and going back to eating proper food.
Yours ever,