Meat-eater Johnny tries life as a veggie
MARCH is National Veggie Month, so we asked Johnny Wilson - a committed carnivore - to see if he could give up meat. Read on to find how he fared...
IF, like me, you like eating meat, ponder this! In your lifetime you'll consume around 11,000 animals.
That's an awful lot of cows, pigs, lambs, chickens and all manner of beasties giving up their lives, just so that you might fill your belly.
Regardless of whether an animal is raised in intensive, free-range or completely organic surroundings, most will suffer distressing deaths in slaughterhouses, at an early age.
If karmic retribution isn't enough to wean you off your addiction, perhaps you might like to consider a 2006 report by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation.
It revealed the farming and slaughtering of animals causes 18 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
If you haven't already guessed, I am of course playing Devil's advocate to try to make you feel guilty.
You shouldn't feel bad. I don't. Well, not all the time, anyway.
But as March is National Veggie Month, it seemed the perfect time to reconsider my meat-eating lifestyle.
As much as I hate vegetables, there is also compelling evidence that eating more of them can reduce the risk of contracting certain diseases.
A 2009 study published in the British Journal of Cancer found vegetarians develop notably fewer cancers of the blood, bladder and stomach.
And there's never been a better time to become a vegetarian, according to Kelly Slade of the charity Animal Aid and co-ordinator of Veggie Month.
She says: "Going veggie is easy, as high street shops and supermarkets now stock a wide range of delicious meat-free products.
"There really is no excuse not to try this healthy and ethical lifestyle."
A month was a bit much, but I was perfectly prepared to give it a week. Well, a working week anyway.
Having been a vegetarian for 12 years in my youth, you'd think it would be easy for me. Not so.
As I say, I hate vegetables. Most of them anyway. Chief among these Category A taste offenders are the unholy triumvirate of cabbage, cauliflower and spinach.
Another reason I'd struggle is that I love tuna and, I hate to admit it, processed ham.
I eat one or the other in a sandwich every day for lunch, much to the mirth of my fancy-salad-munching colleagues.
My plan for a meat-free week involved a classic pincer attack: eat more vegetables and stock up on meat substitutes such as Quorn and those made by Beatle Paul McCartney's late wife Linda.
First stop was Asda in Coronation Street, South Shields, where I bought 'ham', and various veggie sausages and sausage rolls.
For the vegetables I went to one of Shields's most iconic outlets, Hutchinson's fruit and veg shop in Frederick Street, Laygate.
Though apprentice Marc Graham, 22, packed me up a bumper box of goodies, I only picked out a few onions, peppers and spinach.
The spinach was because I was to be shown how to cook it properly by South Tyneside College's food preparation lecturer Diane Dodds.
The married 40-year-old, who has worked all over the world as a chef, had planned a mushroom and spinach lasagne for our culinary lesson.
"If you look at the menus in restaurants, you can see people are becoming a lot more adventurous with vegetarian meals," she said.
"Vegetables are also a healthy option instead of meat, as they're lighter. You need good ingredients though."
Having shown me how to prepare and cook the vegetables (see recipe), sadly I didn't have time to stay to taste the finished dish. I made one at home later that day though.
Like many such dishes, I predictably ended up picking much of the green stuff out.
The feta cheese was a revelation, and the veggie sausages, made of soya, were drier than real ones, but, once covered in beans, were palatable enough too.
The end of the week meatball pasta wasn't too bad either, full as it was of all the veg I do like – mushrooms, peppers and onions.
The meatballs were again made of soya, with added wheat protein, and were really quite nice if you slop something over them.
The lunches were not quite as joyous affairs mind.
I tried four variations to try to make the ham substitute at least edible.
Sadly nothing failed to take away the taste of salty flip-flop. Thankfully, by Friday it had run out.
My veggie week may not have been the most adventurous culinary experience, but at least I slept easy knowing no animals had died for me that week.
The health benefits, as you'd imagine, were minimal over such a short
time.
I think it would take a few weeks at least before you noticed any discernible difference on this score.
What I did realise though is that I could go back to living without most types of meat.
As for the processed ham and tuna? Those bad boys I'm not quite ready to give up – yet.
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Sunday 05 February 2012
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