Fixing dinner

1820:

Animal Rights is the ultimate confrontation. It is social justice put to its ultimate test, arguing the reasons why animals deserve rights.

People are reluctant to discuss it because the society we know and accept is built on our right to exploit animals. Without our licence to kill, abattoirs would close, and meat, milk, eggs and cheese would no longer be legal food. Is it any wonder that people are reluctant to lose these ‘goodies’ and the thousands of edible items made with animal derivatives?

Plant-based diets seem so radical. An ethically based plant-based diet is not only radical but a life-long commitment. This means never again will you ever taste an omelette, milk chocolate, cheese sandwich, let alone rump steak or chicken breast - one might then presume a vegan diet based upon vegan principles would be difficult.

The very thought of restricting one’s eating to foods from the plant kingdom is likely to be unnerving. But from a practising vegan’s point of view, it doesn’t seem that way at all. Once the safety of the diet is established and some of the ‘replacements’ are discovered, ‘going vegan’ doesn’t need to be such a big deal. We save animals and promote ‘veganism’, hoping others will do the same. It follows that the more who go vegan, the greater the variety of vegan products will appear in shops, thus making it all becoming that much easier for people to make the transition from omnivore to herbivore.

But none of this is likely to happen until vegan ingredients stop looking like war-time rations, especially these days when food has come to be regarded as a comforter. The health-only vegans might mean well but their emphasis on whole foods, raw foods and plain eating might be off-putting (although to seasoned vegans this is not how is seems at all) whereas ‘wicked’ vegan food, which is ‘good-tasting’, might serve as a better transition.

In this highly pressured society where we seem to need a release from daily stress, our security blanket is very often food. Which is why it has to be attractive, and be attractively tasty. That can be quite a challenge for home-cooking. It’s not just at the restaurant, with all their facilities and variety on offer, where we can enjoy vegan food. We must be able to knock up attractive meals at home, where our foods rival omnivore’s cuisine.

For most of us, food means preparing our own, and that means every night’s dinner with a looking-forward-to feel about it. Only then will ‘being vegan’ be something we link to ‘indulging’ in attractive food.