This week Billie Eilish served up a reminder of the irritations of veganism. She forced the O2 to go fully plant-based during her six-night run of shows – and the Daily Mail reported that fans, who’d paid £70+ for a ticket to see her, were not happy about the food on offer at the arena. One said: ‘Punters were less than impressed with the vegan options – a mixture of pizzas, cauliflower bits and loaded fries – with more than one asking “Did they run out of meat or something?”.’
But I expect their real irritation had little to do with the food itself – and everything to do with having vegan-only options shoved down their throats. So, what exactly is it that’s so annoying about veganism?
In part, perhaps it’s how fashionable it’s become. It’s evolved since it was dominated by Corbyn-a-likes in Jesus sandals on allotments or Neil in the The Young Ones espousing ‘vegetable rights’; now it’s people in pleather trousers with asymmetric pink hair drinking plant-based cocktails. People appear to identify as vegan as if it were a sexuality – pulse-sexual, anyone?
Or perhaps it’s that the advantages of veganism are debatable. Although vegans claim it’s healthier, anyone who has actually seen what vegans eat knows the staple of their diet is chips. A study this year by New Zealand’s Massey University found half of vegans were deprived of two specific amino acids, leaving them at risk of muscle wastage. Another report by UK experts last week found that no plant-based milk is ‘nutritionally equivalent’ to cow’s milk, and that there is ‘potential toxicological concern’ for under-fives who follow a vegan diet and consume soya milk.
The promise that going vegan is automatically healthier is absurd when even Häagen-Dazs has a vegan range. In the growing UK vegan food market, estimated to be worth over £1 billion, companies competing to pump out vegan products are often more interested in marketing than nutritional value, with much of it highly processed and full of salt, sweetener, saturated fat or refined sugar. A study in China found vegetarians aged less healthily than omnivores, not because their diet lacked animal products, but because the food they did eat was generally lower quality.
Maybe consumers are starting to cotton on, with sales of chilled and frozen meat alternatives dropping 21 per cent in the year to June 2024 compared with two years earlier. Heinz ditched its vegan salad cream, Greggs dropped its vegan ‘steak’ bake and even Quorn abandoned its veggie ‘bacon’. Innocent scrapped its dairy-free milk range, joking that only five people bought it.
The claim that veganism is more environmentally friendly has also always seemed dubious. My angry lentil of a former lodger and I used to argue about how his international vegan diet could possibly be more carbon-conscious than my local, seasonal, meat-based one – as we sat down to breakfast with my milk from the cows grazing up the road delivered by the milkman on his electric float, and his almond milk flown in from California where its production causes droughts. It takes 130 pints of water to produce a single glass of almond milk. Not to mention the billions of bees, essential to pollinating almonds, who die in the process.
People appear to identify as vegan as if it were a sexuality – pulse-sexual, anyone?
The vast demand for quinoa is a scourge on Peru where overproduction has caused soil degradation and made a local staple unaffordable to indigenous people. Farming avocados has caused water shortages in Chile, and producing lab-grown meat has been shown to create emissions as high as producing hamburgers.
Like many people, I support the moral case for veganism. Who condones animals suffering? But surely it’s better to advocate for better farming practices than to call for an end to the meat industry? After all, what will we do with the animals? Are we just going to let the cows run free? Or have one last massive barbecue to celebrate? Will farmers have their livestock forcibly taken away? What about horses? What about pets? I’m not sure my chocolate labrador Bear will be able to fend for himself.
Still, the fact the moral argument for veganism is so compelling makes the fall of the vegan diet more confusing. As sales of plant-based products decline and the fake meat project is fading away, it reveals the true problem with veganism: not that people don’t like animals, or vegetables, but that they can’t stand vegans. Tofu-munchers are more irritating than cyclists, wild swimmers, electric car-owners and Greta Thunberg combined. They are too often humourless and militant. No one was surprised when a study released last month showed that, despite the stereotype of being peace-loving sandal-wearing hippies, in reality vegans showed a greater desire for power and social status than meat-eaters.
Vegans revel in being sanctimonious. Poor Eilish’s fans didn’t just have their concert-night menu controlled, but were subjected pre-show to a self-aggrandising film about the singer’s diet. But as far as the vegans are concerned, even she can’t get it right either. Despite making her whole tour meat-free, she has still had strips torn off her online by pugnacious turnips complaining she wears leather, eats honey and rides horses, which seem to me minor infringements.
Still, I have seen this kind of swede-induced madness among my own vegan friends, who get angry if I drink non-vegan wine (something to do with fish skins), wear silk (a nice problem to have) or put on shirts with mother-of-pearl buttons (an animal product!). It all serves to highlight what a bourgeois endeavour veganism has become.
Now, between the outrageous Peta campaigns and Gary Yourofsky’s preaching, veganism is becoming an extremist lifestyle. With judgmental meat-shaming, vegans have alienated others from joining their cause. It is a sad case of the left eating its plant-based self.
