Fixing dinner

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Animal Rights is the ultimate confrontation. It is social justice put to its test, arguing why animals deserve rights and why we no longer need animal issues stirring up our guilt.
So, people are reluctant to discuss it. Surprise, surprise! You can understand why though, because there’s nothing to discuss. The society we know, accept, have become used to has been built on our right to exploit animals. Dismantle that ‘right’ by giving animals rights and immediately the abattoirs are closed, and meat, milk, eggs and cheese automatically disappear. 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 and, one might presume, difficult. The very thought of restricting one’s eating to foods from the plant kingdom is probably unnerving. But from the other side 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’ isn’t such a big deal. We hope others will do the same because it follows that the more who go vegan the greater the variety of vegan products will appear in shops, thus all becoming that much easier for people to make the transition from omnivore to herbivore.
All that isn’t going to happen until vegan food stops looking like war-time rations, especially these days when food has become such a comforter. The health-only vegans might mean well but their emphasis on whole foods, raw foods and plain eating might be off-putting whereas ‘wicked’ vegan food which emphasises good-tasting food might serve as a better transition.
In this highly pressured society where we do need comforting. The security blanket is food. And that’s why is has to be attractive, look attractive and be attractive to the taste. That can be quite a challenge for home-cooking. It’s not just at the restaurant where we can enjoy our food, it’s at home where food must be able to rival the omnivore’s cuisine. Many of us can’t afford to visit restaurants however good they are.
For most of us food means preparing our own, and that means every night’s dinner which has to have a looking-forward-to feel about it. Only then will ‘being vegan’ be something to look forward to.