Is it no longer cool to be vegan?
As restaurants close and meat gets added back to the menus, I'm wondering if it was a fad all along...
Before this latest news, I had already wondered if veganism had lost its popularity.
I noticed a few influencers I follow had quietly quit their plant-based diets, along with friends and acquaintances in real life.
Not to mention that despite there being more ‘meat’ alternatives in the supermarket than ever, I’ve never seen a shelf that needs restocking.
However, I don’t live on a tube line anymore or work in central London, so is my view going to be skewed?
Then, I saw the news about a vegan restaurant in Macclesfield adding meat to their menu, in order to avoid closing - "When some people find out we are vegan they walk out".
Neat Burger, a vegan fast food chain, closed 4 London sites after losses of 145%, while Beyond Burger’s sales continue to drop. Along with all “fake meats” in the UK.
Now, not to go all Jeremy Clarkson on you, but I am one of those people who would hear a restaurant is vegan and walk out.
Unlike Jeremy, that’s something I feel ashamed to admit. But, to me, why would I pay for something that has all the good stuff taken out?
Vegetarian, I’m fine with, but vegan. I just can’t get on board. It just gives Ian “I’ve got nothing left” Beale.
As you know, I’m a spoilt beauty journalist and there was a period where brands would celebrate their latest launch with some form of cake.
Great in theory right?
Except when all of those cakes were vegan.
Then it turned into vegan dinners. In fact, there’s one that has remained burned in my memory because the starter was quite literally soil.
I honestly felt like I was being forced into a plant-based diet and I was torn between guilt for my hatred of it and resentment for the disregard to my dietary requests.
Now, I totally appreciate that for many people, veganism and a plant-based diet isn’t a trend and I truly wish I could be one of you. But, I think society’s approach to it over the last few years, perfectly mirrored our unsustainable crash diet culture.
It wasn’t good enough to just reduce your meat intake or to switch to milk alternatives, you had to be all or nothing. Which was going to be hard to sustain for anyone.
Whereas now, the conversation is switching to processed food and a more balanced approach to our diet in general. It’s like every few years we just forget that age old saying of, "Everything in moderation”.
Honestly, I was staring at a pack of Quorn Vegan Smokey Ham in the Co-Op today, wondering what the hell was in it, to make it that colour.
True, you could say the same for a regular pack of chopped and shaped ham, but at least that has the benefit of familiarity to it. Plus, fun fact, I can’t eat Quorn as it gives me intense stomach cramps.
I feel like a lot of these meat-free brands and fast food chains weren’t made for real vegans. They were made for people like me. To entice us in. After all, if you eat sausages that are 40% pork, is there really any difference?
The best vegans I know, are ones with pure hearts of gold. They do it for the greater good, not because jackfruit can have a faintly similar texture to chicken, if you cook it by one very specific method.
The rest of us, just wanted a new version of a Gregg’s sausage roll and when life got tough, we realised we preferred the old one anyway.
As a veggie I do hope all the meat replacements vanish. The ones that are made to taste or look like a chunk of meat, no thank you. I read they were making fake meat that would bleed like a rare steak!
I started not eating meat due to texture, and now the thought of it puts me off too,. I've returned dishes in veggie restaurants because they've made it taste like beef. I am with you on not liking quorn, and I think if you want to eat meat just do it. Then restaurants can stop making the few veggie options I can have taste like meat.
For me, this is profoundly sad, and - perhaps embarrassingly, though I don’t really care - I cried when I read about that restaurant. I’ve been a vegetarian (and on-off vegan) for… 18 years, I am raising my child as a pescatarian (robust evidence suggests that specifically the long-chain fatty acids of Omega 3 can only be consumed in oily fish, and that is all that is missing from a vegetarian diet), and the rise of a plant-based diet has been one of few things that has consoled me in a time of seeming-pushback against progress in favour of so-called traditional values, which include a cultural palate of a meat-focused plate. My partner also works in asset management for businesses with eco creds, one of which is at the helm of producing lab-grown meat as a way to appeal to the aforementioned palate, whilst pushing forward with reducing meat consumption for the sake of the planet. I think you’re right that veganism became trendy, and I feared this day would come. Having said that, ‘fear’ is perhaps the wrong word; to my way of thinking, it was inevitable and cannot be separated from a more general movement in the direction of conservatism (lower and upper case C!).