Being vegan sometimes needs fleshing out

Jerry the bull is on the lam in Croatia. Or he was, last time I looked on Tuesday. Apparently, the one-year-old bovine wasn’t keen on being corralled towards a slaughterhouse in Split, and made a break for it, heading for the nearby hills, where he has evaded capture.

Suddenly Jerry – nicknamed after the mouse in the Tom and Jerry cartoon – has become a celebrity, with people on social media cheering him on. “Justice for Jerry!” they tweeted. “Hang in there, Jerry!” they cried. Even the bull’s owner, Ivan Bozic, has pledged that if Jerry is found he will be spared the slaughterhouse.

It struck me as funny, yet not surprising, that Jerry’s antics garnered the admiration of millions of people – many no doubt meat-eaters – and, for a brief moment, highlighted the horrors of abattoirs. Everyone loves a hero. It also reminded me of how a missing lamb, not a bull on the lam, made me put aside my steak knife when I was 12.

Actually, it was not one, but two lambs – Lucky and Dribbles – who changed my mind and brought strife and terrible bean terrines into our family home. After the lambs were rejected by their mother, I dedicated myself to them, bottle-feeding them every day before and after school. They’d settle in my lap and smell of lanolin and breath, and I’d sing to them in German (not really) and kiss them on their lips (really). Then they suddenly disappeared, and a few days later my mother served up chops for dinner.

After much wailing, shouting and threatening to scratch my father’s Passat with knitting needles, I laid down my knife and fork, wiped my mouth and declared I was becoming a vegetarian. That would teach them. I was in a growth spurt! I needed protein! My parents would have to start growing soya beans and learn the ways of the lentil.

Back in the Eighties, being a veggie was straightforward: you ate lots of vegetables, sometimes dabbled in soya mince, occasionally ate tuna by mistake in a pie, and cooked endless pots of rice and lentils. It was all quite Zen.

Now, with the rise of veganism, faux anti-consumerism, organic this, organic that, kombucha underpants and kale, it’s all a rather tense, sometimes competitive scene. And it’s meat-that-isn’t-meat-but-tastes-like-meat that sets people apart.

At a recent wedding, I shared a table with a devout vegan, a half-arsed vegan and a total-vegan-except-for-eggs. As someone trying to go the whole vegan hog, but not always succeeding (Brie! chocolate eclairs!), I was eager to kneel at the feet of non-meat masters to glean some wisdom. What I learnt quite quickly is that if you’re serious about being a Real Vegan, you should never admit to enjoying the taste of meat. Sure, confess to loving the heinous, bitter, butt-fibre bile of kale, but never harp on about the smoky succulence of bacon or how much you miss chicken sosaties.

“Sis. I don’t know why anyone who chooses not to eat meat can eat those things,” the devout vegan said of Beyond Meat patties.

“Because they taste exactly like a beef burger, and even the texture is identical and there’s that weird blood taste, and they’re pretty delicious,” I didn’t say. Not even in a small voice.

“Ja, and those sausages that taste like pork. So weird,” said the half-arsed vegan, tucking into a bowl of cow-udder ice cream and cow-udder chocolate sauce. Just saying.

To be clear, I love vegetables. If I had to choose between a head of broccoli or a handful of jellybeans, I’d go with the green stuff every time. And I enjoy eating healthy foods and experimenting with sweet potatoes. But occasionally, just as spinach feels as though it’s cleansing my blood and beetroot feels as though it’s rinsing my liver, my body craves something fleshy and animal, almost bloody, to course through its veins.

Perhaps it’s an evolutionary imprint left over from hominid days, or maybe it’s just the taste. Regardless of the reasons, I don’t give in to my full werewolf desires, or even my homo sapiens ones. Because I still believe, as I did when I was 12, that eating animals is wrong and foregoing meat is a choice I can make. So I’ll quietly fry a little Linda McCartney something, or a Quorn something else, and eat it, knowing it’s not a Jerry or a Lucky and that I’m decidedly human and animal, all mixed up in one perfectly imperfect body.

And surely if someone likes how meat tastes but chooses not to eat it because of ethical, moral, sheep-based reasons, they’re actually the Really Real Vegans? Noble. Heroic. Possibly with an inferiority complex.

I hope Jerry is found safe and unharmed. Or maybe he’ll live out his life carousing with the fallow deer that inhabit the Croatian woods, teaching them how to look like rocks to avoid being shot by hunters. And perhaps carnivorous Jerry sympathisers will be persuaded to change their ways, even just a little – maybe eat less meat, or switch to meat-that-isn’t-meat-but-tastes-like-meat. Because every bit helps, no matter what the kale fascists say.

World Vegan Day

Image by Seksak Kerdkanno from Pixabay

October 31 may be a day of ghosts, ghouls and gaggles of trick-or-treating kids, but today, 1 November, is when grains, greens and goodness take over. World Vegan Day has been celebrated annually on this day since 1994, when Louise Wallis, the chair of The Vegan Society in the UK, established the event.

So what exactly happens on World Vegan Day? Besides big corporates using the event to push their wares (Ben & Jerry’s in the US is giving away free scoops of its dairy-free ice cream), there are workshops, cooking demonstrations, parties and talks. The day also marks the start of World Vegan Month, and if you’re keen to try out veganism but aren’t sure if it’s for you, a good place to start is by taking the Vegan Pledge, which offers support and advice for newbies, or visiting the South African Vegan Society website for a local take on things. DM

Helen Walne is an aspirant vegan who detests food snobs, kale fascists, tartare sauce and misplaced apostrophes on menus, but is very fond of broccoli.