I turned vegan four months ago – am I allowed to preach yet?

A year ago, after mostly avoiding meat for several months, I decided to make the commitment to being fully vegetarian. My decision for this was mostly driven by a concern for the planet. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN estimates that 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the livestock industry. The financial implications of not buying meat were also extremely satisfying (you can buy two kilos of dried beans for a couple of quids and that turns into a lot of food).

Having said that, becoming a committed vegetarian wasn’t so easy — not for the first couple of months at least. Formerly, I was someone who really enjoyed eating meat. And living with other meat eaters was not easy, the smells of cooking would make my stomach pang. Borough Market was a no go. A common experience amongst recently turned herbivores is a foreboding anxiety that you will never feel full again; you convince yourself that there is no food that will satiate your appetite like meat could. I replaced that hole with emetic quantities of chocolate and biscuits. A Lidl trip would be a conveyor belt full of vegetables chased by a stack of twelve or fifteen 30p chocolate bars.

But those feelings go pretty quickly (as if you thought that saving the planet was going to be easy?*). Give it a couple of months. And in all honesty, after three I found myself utterly repulsed by the smell of cooking meat, never mind the thought of eating a killed animal.

After not too long, I cut eating dairy. I didn’t mean it as any kind of actual commitment — I would never have used the word vegan, it felt so loaded, so critical of everyone else. My thinking was that cutting dairy would be easy – I have a lifelong phobia of wet milk and I never trusted supermarket eggs (“free-range” doesn’t mean much). And seeing as I cook just about all the food I eat, I very happily went without dairy. For a few months at least.

It all fell apart when I went home during the summer: my parents had cruelly filled the fridge with lots and lots of delicious cheese. And out of London, the only non-meat to eat at pubs is mac and cheese or vegetable lasagne (which comes with a whole lot more cheese). Eggs were an issue, made prominent by my mum’s insistence that the “lovely eggs” from her “lovely chickens” were reasonably ecologically secure — besides, they were lovely.

I finally resolved that when I came back down, I’d avoid dairy. From being vegetarian, this turned out to be quite easy and very satisfying. My skin was instantly better, I felt a lot better in my self. Also, I realised how much dairy eaters stink (you smell a lot worse than you think!). Not requiring animals in your food chain is also incredibly satisfying. There are literally uncountable reasons why it is better for the planet to be vegan, and I could just do a long list here, but to save this article from becoming too preachy I’ll just mention one thing.

Whilst vegetarianism is a great way to greatly shrink your ecological footprint, you’re still relying on domesticated animals. We’re currently living in an age of mass extinction, the total mass of all the humans on the Earth is around seven times that of all the other wild terrestrial animals together, and the mass of domesticated animals is twice that of humans. I strongly feel that domesticated animals are very distinct from their wild counterparts, they have been humanised — bred to be useful rather than necessarily healthy or happy (and there is overwhelming evidence for emotional intelligence, particularly amongst the large mammals which are most “useful” to us). Growing up in the countryside I was already aware of the gaunt misery of dairy cattle, and in London of the deformed dogs, inbred to make cute, perpetually juvenile pets. Humans and their animals outweigh the wildlife, with whom we share the Earth's surface, by more than twenty times. And without being too preachy (I have, haven’t I?), it was ethically inescapable that I should turn from vegetarian to vegan. Of course I still accept that my western lifestyle relies on a great deal of environmental destruction and human and animal oppression. Generally, people were supportive of my decision, though my friends outside of London took a great deal of the piss (less than I’d expect though), and my mum insisted on diagnosing my diet as orthorexic — I still haven’t taken a single vitamin D or B12 though (yeah, fuck the nutritional establishment!).

My grandparents, on the other hand, were far less impressed. When I was going round to theirs for tea, I rang ahead to notify them of my “even more difficult dietary situation” and asked if “that would be OK?”. My grandmother told me that “it would have to be, wouldn’t it?”. Naturally, I assumed by her tone that she was joking, but my mum insisted that she really wasn’t. At theirs, I ate a separate plate of dhal and rice while my granddad laid into me, out of principle (or disappointment) I expect. After that we were all ok though. At Christmas, I cooked a separate nut and lentil Wellington, but my family were all very nice about it and my sister made the best chocolate cake (Nigella).

It is quite easy going vegan, and I’ll say it – go vegan! (Or at least stop eating meat). *also, remember not to be overtly smug or too self-righteous.