part of the "vegan messaging" I've seen recently is really annoying me.
Something I have realised since moving out of London is that vegetarian options elsewhere are more limited and that's really frustrating a lot of the time. Generally the landscape of vegetarian food has been making some really interesting changes, partly because bigger organisations are trying new things and some of them are great, but smaller companies are not really surviving or being stocked in large places because when costs are being squeezed, the cost of faux meat is pretty high and it is the sort of thing that actually, dietarily, it's not integral, but it's a nice to have. If you know vegetarian cooking, you can make good food without it, and if you don't Margherita pizza and chips is way cheaper anyway.
Particularly around Christmas I struggle because the typical vegetarian options tend to be things like mock-beef wellington or some form of pie and I have a real aversion to pastry, and it can make me feel quite sick. A lot of places are doing better vegetarian options than when I moved to London, but the problem that I have currently is this idea that comes from vegans where it's being suggested that restaurants and eateries of all varieties make all of their vegetarian options as vegan options, because all vegetarians can eat vegan, but vegans can't eat everything vegetarian. Whilst I understand it, I completely disagree and that's for a number of reasons.
The first one is dietary autonomy.
Anyone who has ever been to my house, since I bought this place, will know that I'm actually pretty open to people bringing whatever they eat into my home. I did used to be a bit more of a pain in the ass about it - mainly because the idea of anything with meat contaminating my food was enough to make me want to be sick - but these days as long as no one is trying to get me to eat anything I don't want to, I kind of don't mind, although if there was raw chicken involved I am a bit manic about cleaning. It's my choice what I eat, and for that to include eggs and cheese and honey, so I don't think it's really fair for vegans to decide that vegetarians should be eating vegan just because that works better for them.
The second is that there are things in vegan food I just hate.
Most vegan cheese includes coconut oil, and honestly, it's disgusting. Mostly with vegetarian food it's the exclusion of a relatively small list of ingredients, but with vegan food, the number of ingredients which can't be used is a lot, and not being able to use things like butter, or eggs to bind things, means the use of other ingredients which not everyone is used to, not everyone likes, and that make it exceptionally difficult for people with sensory issues to cope with. Even things like vegan cake have a different consistency and texture, so being forced into that being potentially your only option doesn't seem fair.
The third this is that this argument isn't adding options to a v/ve menu at all. In most places now there are at least two to three v/ve options on the menu, but arguing that all of these should be vegan doesn't expand the number of dishes on offer, making there be three or four choice or more, it just means that there are the same number, or actually, for some there would be less, because you can't make vegan halloumi fries (or you can, but they would be expensive and most probably made of coconut oil) and there are a number of dishes which would go through the same. Whilst it would be lovely for chefs and cooking schools to value vegan cooking as highly as 'normal' cooking, and to make sure that staff are equipped to produce decent meals which are suitable for people with all dietary requirements, I think that's something which is a longer term goal than just offering the easy fix of 'make all the veggie options vegan'. We're only on day 4 of Veganuary and it's already getting on my nerves.
