Completely agree. I also find that as a coeliac, increasingly shelf space/menu choices that previously were gluten free are being replaced by vegan options which aren't gluten free. Just looked up the stats, and 1% of the population is coeliac compared to the 2% that is vegan, so perhaps I shouldn't complain too loudly! But it does make me feel that gluten free was treated as a trend for a while that has now been replaced by vegan.
eat all of the food groups, with a high emphasis of masses of vegetables & pulses, everything is home made here, thankfully.
The heavily processed ‘vegan meat’ products look and sound dreadful. My late Mother was vegetarian, bordering on vegan and I had no issues in producing super vegetable & pulse filled meals, pies & soups as she certainly had no desire to have a ‘meat’ substitute.
The ingredients on these products film of additives makes my head spin!
I honestly do not think they represent a balanced diet, vegetarian, flexitarian & vegan can be catered for without resorting to this heavily processed diet.
100% agree that vegans are ruining restaurants for vegetarians. I'm a meat eater but when I go out I tend to go vegetarian unless I know the restaurant's sourcing of their meat. I understand the drive from food providers to provide one option but it would be great to be able to at least choose to add proper cheese rather be forced to eat vegan 'cheese'. Ideally of course to have a vegetarian dish as an option too. Hopefully more and more restaurants will move away from the veganisation of everything and revert to cooking beautiful vegetables with butter, cream, cheese or eggs.
As a life long meat eater I strongly agree that we are all being pushed down the vegan route whether we like it or not. I am very happy to eat vegetarian food well prepared and cooked but like many others I see most vegan foods as being highly processed and dependant on imported raw materials instead of supporting local domestic farmers. We should fight back and make the supermarkets aware that most of us do not want this vegan trend to carry on any further
As a devout carnivore who also eats vegetables I can't really comment but can see how that can happen and do question the "meat & cheese substitute" thing. However, I want to mention something that is rarely questioned regarding Biodynamic wines which are growing in popularity but are rarely considered if these are vegan or not. They categorically cannot be - not regarding the wine-making process but what happens in the vineyard - where certain preparations are used from buried cow horns and deer and sheep stomach. Also some producers do not use mechanisation in the vineyard but use horses which presumably serious vegans would see as exploitation of animals. When did veganism actually start? I would submit it was impossible to be vegan prior to mechanisation and the use of rubber and plastics as leather alternatives for shoes. Also if we stop eating animals they will disappear from our countryside and a few end up in zoos! Not all land is suitable for growing vegitables or other crops. Discuss!
I’m vegetarian and I’m fed up of being put into the same category as vegans.
When I chose to go out for a meal I’d like choice and not to be offered the same options as vegans.
I choose to not eat meat as I don’t enjoy the taste or texture, I don’t want to be offered, a processed imitation of meat, neither do I want a bowl of salad!
I rarely go out to eat nowadays as the options for vegetarians are so poor, it’s going back to 30 years ago where you either had mushroom stroganoff or vege lasagna to choose from.
I’d much prefer to stay at home and cook something I really enjoy.
Hi Fiona - My daughter is vegan purely for environmental and sustainability reasons. She is a real foodie and gets frustrated at the lack of decent vegan options when we go out to eat…here she is doing her bit to save the planet, not belonging to some cult as was suggested! Cooking for her is a pain, but I am proud and applaud her passion at the same time!! Julie
I'm a meat eater, but with so many vegetarian friends, aim for restaurants that have good options for them. Considering the prevalence of small plate places now, it often means my meal being veggie as well, which in many of the places I go to is just as good if not better than the meat options. But I refuse to eat fake cheese, diary, meat and the like. If I want vegan food, I'm happy to go Asian or Indian but western cuisine's vegan options are just over processed faux versions of meat and dairy and are just gross.
Hi Fiona, pre covid we owned a vegetarian restaurant in London for many years (Vanilla Black). We always had a couple of vegan options on the menu and when the vegan movement exploded we considered becoming completely vegan, some other restaurants did. We decided against it and remained a vegetarian restaurant, lost count of the amount of people who thanked us for making that decision.
Hi Fiona. Great article thank you. Like you say so many of us are trying to eat less meat for a range of reasons. But the vegan option often isn't an option - many a time it doesn't contain ANY protein at all. Which means someone like me is going to be hungry half an hour after that meal.
Fiona , this is a really good point . I was vegetarian for a time but struggled to find non-vegan food esp in restaurants . I totally agree that a lot of vegan food is ultra-processed and surely this is a backward step . I think it a point worth mentioning that in this country it is the very small vocal minority that make the most noise and the rather supine majority go along with it . This has happened and is happening in a number of minority areas but that is a discussion for a different stack I think
Another thought: the real problem here is not vegan/veggie dishes, but fake food. I don’t believe anyone actually wants to eat fake meat/cheese etc. Surely this is where the problem lies?
As a life-long vegetarian I don't mind meat substitutes and have largely switched to vegan butter and milk, but the monotony of Beyond Meat burgers (with enormous mark-up - I can literally buy the exact same thing from Sainsbury's for £3) as the one vegetarian/vegan choice on a menu reminds me of the boring vegetarian choices of 20 years ago. Yippeee, another goats' cheese tartlet with salad...
This hard divide (meat: no meat) is pretty old-fashioned. People eat a range of food and diets, so restaurants should either focus on one speciality or have a good range of choice for everyone. Shout out here to the Punter pub in Oxford, which is fully vegan but has a brilliant menu which everyone enjoys.
I do also feel that some vegans are now drawing a hard dividing line with vegetarians, which doesn't help either. Let people make their own choices about the balance in their diets, and celebrate their efforts to eat healthily and sustainably, instead of acting superior because I won't yet give up cheese for vegan cheese.
My husband has been a vegetarian for 38 years and he and his (many!) vegetarian friends always say “don’t go vegan on me!” Definitely two different camps.
I'm in the middle of writing a post about the 'plant based' revolution. It sets my teeth on edge because it usually means vegan, so vegetarian dishes are disappearing from menus. I remember when McDonald's did a bean burger which we students loved. Now it's all faux meat and faux cheese. No thanks.
Completely agree. I also find that as a coeliac, increasingly shelf space/menu choices that previously were gluten free are being replaced by vegan options which aren't gluten free. Just looked up the stats, and 1% of the population is coeliac compared to the 2% that is vegan, so perhaps I shouldn't complain too loudly! But it does make me feel that gluten free was treated as a trend for a while that has now been replaced by vegan.
I/we
eat all of the food groups, with a high emphasis of masses of vegetables & pulses, everything is home made here, thankfully.
The heavily processed ‘vegan meat’ products look and sound dreadful. My late Mother was vegetarian, bordering on vegan and I had no issues in producing super vegetable & pulse filled meals, pies & soups as she certainly had no desire to have a ‘meat’ substitute.
The ingredients on these products film of additives makes my head spin!
I honestly do not think they represent a balanced diet, vegetarian, flexitarian & vegan can be catered for without resorting to this heavily processed diet.
100% agree that vegans are ruining restaurants for vegetarians. I'm a meat eater but when I go out I tend to go vegetarian unless I know the restaurant's sourcing of their meat. I understand the drive from food providers to provide one option but it would be great to be able to at least choose to add proper cheese rather be forced to eat vegan 'cheese'. Ideally of course to have a vegetarian dish as an option too. Hopefully more and more restaurants will move away from the veganisation of everything and revert to cooking beautiful vegetables with butter, cream, cheese or eggs.
As a life long meat eater I strongly agree that we are all being pushed down the vegan route whether we like it or not. I am very happy to eat vegetarian food well prepared and cooked but like many others I see most vegan foods as being highly processed and dependant on imported raw materials instead of supporting local domestic farmers. We should fight back and make the supermarkets aware that most of us do not want this vegan trend to carry on any further
As a devout carnivore who also eats vegetables I can't really comment but can see how that can happen and do question the "meat & cheese substitute" thing. However, I want to mention something that is rarely questioned regarding Biodynamic wines which are growing in popularity but are rarely considered if these are vegan or not. They categorically cannot be - not regarding the wine-making process but what happens in the vineyard - where certain preparations are used from buried cow horns and deer and sheep stomach. Also some producers do not use mechanisation in the vineyard but use horses which presumably serious vegans would see as exploitation of animals. When did veganism actually start? I would submit it was impossible to be vegan prior to mechanisation and the use of rubber and plastics as leather alternatives for shoes. Also if we stop eating animals they will disappear from our countryside and a few end up in zoos! Not all land is suitable for growing vegitables or other crops. Discuss!
Yes absolutely!
I’m vegetarian and I’m fed up of being put into the same category as vegans.
When I chose to go out for a meal I’d like choice and not to be offered the same options as vegans.
I choose to not eat meat as I don’t enjoy the taste or texture, I don’t want to be offered, a processed imitation of meat, neither do I want a bowl of salad!
I rarely go out to eat nowadays as the options for vegetarians are so poor, it’s going back to 30 years ago where you either had mushroom stroganoff or vege lasagna to choose from.
I’d much prefer to stay at home and cook something I really enjoy.
Hi Fiona - My daughter is vegan purely for environmental and sustainability reasons. She is a real foodie and gets frustrated at the lack of decent vegan options when we go out to eat…here she is doing her bit to save the planet, not belonging to some cult as was suggested! Cooking for her is a pain, but I am proud and applaud her passion at the same time!! Julie
I'm a meat eater, but with so many vegetarian friends, aim for restaurants that have good options for them. Considering the prevalence of small plate places now, it often means my meal being veggie as well, which in many of the places I go to is just as good if not better than the meat options. But I refuse to eat fake cheese, diary, meat and the like. If I want vegan food, I'm happy to go Asian or Indian but western cuisine's vegan options are just over processed faux versions of meat and dairy and are just gross.
Hi Fiona, pre covid we owned a vegetarian restaurant in London for many years (Vanilla Black). We always had a couple of vegan options on the menu and when the vegan movement exploded we considered becoming completely vegan, some other restaurants did. We decided against it and remained a vegetarian restaurant, lost count of the amount of people who thanked us for making that decision.
Hi Fiona. Great article thank you. Like you say so many of us are trying to eat less meat for a range of reasons. But the vegan option often isn't an option - many a time it doesn't contain ANY protein at all. Which means someone like me is going to be hungry half an hour after that meal.
Fiona , this is a really good point . I was vegetarian for a time but struggled to find non-vegan food esp in restaurants . I totally agree that a lot of vegan food is ultra-processed and surely this is a backward step . I think it a point worth mentioning that in this country it is the very small vocal minority that make the most noise and the rather supine majority go along with it . This has happened and is happening in a number of minority areas but that is a discussion for a different stack I think
Another thought: the real problem here is not vegan/veggie dishes, but fake food. I don’t believe anyone actually wants to eat fake meat/cheese etc. Surely this is where the problem lies?
As a life-long vegetarian I don't mind meat substitutes and have largely switched to vegan butter and milk, but the monotony of Beyond Meat burgers (with enormous mark-up - I can literally buy the exact same thing from Sainsbury's for £3) as the one vegetarian/vegan choice on a menu reminds me of the boring vegetarian choices of 20 years ago. Yippeee, another goats' cheese tartlet with salad...
This hard divide (meat: no meat) is pretty old-fashioned. People eat a range of food and diets, so restaurants should either focus on one speciality or have a good range of choice for everyone. Shout out here to the Punter pub in Oxford, which is fully vegan but has a brilliant menu which everyone enjoys.
I do also feel that some vegans are now drawing a hard dividing line with vegetarians, which doesn't help either. Let people make their own choices about the balance in their diets, and celebrate their efforts to eat healthily and sustainably, instead of acting superior because I won't yet give up cheese for vegan cheese.
This is certainly my experience and has caused me to avoid eating in any restaurant that follows this practice.
My husband has been a vegetarian for 38 years and he and his (many!) vegetarian friends always say “don’t go vegan on me!” Definitely two different camps.
I'm in the middle of writing a post about the 'plant based' revolution. It sets my teeth on edge because it usually means vegan, so vegetarian dishes are disappearing from menus. I remember when McDonald's did a bean burger which we students loved. Now it's all faux meat and faux cheese. No thanks.