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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/01/vegan-william-sitwell-waitrose-meat-plant
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| Version 3 | Version 4 |
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| Meat martyrs be warned: the vegans will inherit the Earth | Meat martyrs be warned: the vegans will inherit the Earth |
| (about 2 months later) | |
| Why do some people hate vegans so much? There are worse things in life than choosing to eat plants, after all. It’s not a personal attack on anyone else’s right to a nice juicy steak, or perhaps more accurately, it doesn’t have to be. The minority of extremists who very much do want to stop everyone else having a nice juicy steak, using methods up to and including violence, are an exception who ruin the reputation of veganism for everyone else. | Why do some people hate vegans so much? There are worse things in life than choosing to eat plants, after all. It’s not a personal attack on anyone else’s right to a nice juicy steak, or perhaps more accurately, it doesn’t have to be. The minority of extremists who very much do want to stop everyone else having a nice juicy steak, using methods up to and including violence, are an exception who ruin the reputation of veganism for everyone else. |
| US midterms: all about Trump? – podcast | US midterms: all about Trump? – podcast |
| Yet something about the decision to skip animal products seems to make a certain kind of person – socially conservative, misses the days when you could smoke in pubs, enraged by the idea of gender-neutral pronouns – lose the plot. Bloody millennials, with their avocado this and their almond milk that! Damn lefty liberal elite, too, with its sanctimonious mission to ruin everyone else’s fun. Even the Great British Bake Off’s normally gentle audience got irritable earlier this month over an episode involving vegan cakes. | Yet something about the decision to skip animal products seems to make a certain kind of person – socially conservative, misses the days when you could smoke in pubs, enraged by the idea of gender-neutral pronouns – lose the plot. Bloody millennials, with their avocado this and their almond milk that! Damn lefty liberal elite, too, with its sanctimonious mission to ruin everyone else’s fun. Even the Great British Bake Off’s normally gentle audience got irritable earlier this month over an episode involving vegan cakes. |
| But at least nobody was fired over it. This week the food critic William Sitwell was forced to quit as editor of Waitrose’s in-house magazine, after responding to the freelance journalist Selene Nelson’s perfectly polite pitch for a series on vegan cooking with the words “how about a series on killing vegans, one by one. Ways to trap them? How to interrogate them properly? Expose their hypocrisy? Force-feed them meat?” And thus did he join the rapidly growing pantheon of middle-aged martyrs whose careers are destroyed not so much by one bad joke as by a failure to keep up with a world that’s changing around them. No wonder this storm in a (herbal) tea cup has become a culture war in perfect microcosm, a battle between those who think political correctness has gone mad on the one hand and people crying “veganphobia” on the other. | But at least nobody was fired over it. This week the food critic William Sitwell was forced to quit as editor of Waitrose’s in-house magazine, after responding to the freelance journalist Selene Nelson’s perfectly polite pitch for a series on vegan cooking with the words “how about a series on killing vegans, one by one. Ways to trap them? How to interrogate them properly? Expose their hypocrisy? Force-feed them meat?” And thus did he join the rapidly growing pantheon of middle-aged martyrs whose careers are destroyed not so much by one bad joke as by a failure to keep up with a world that’s changing around them. No wonder this storm in a (herbal) tea cup has become a culture war in perfect microcosm, a battle between those who think political correctness has gone mad on the one hand and people crying “veganphobia” on the other. |
| Even Bake Off’s audience got uncharacteristically irritable earlier this month over an episode involving vegan cakes | Even Bake Off’s audience got uncharacteristically irritable earlier this month over an episode involving vegan cakes |
| Claims that what Sitwell said was hate speech or even that veganism should become a legally protected characteristic, like race or sexual orientation, are frankly hard to swallow. Diet is a lifestyle choice, not an intrinsic human characteristic persecuted down the ages. If vegans are to be treated as an oppressed minority then so arguably should dairy farmers be, given the level of intimidation some now experience from self-appointed activists against milk production. | Claims that what Sitwell said was hate speech or even that veganism should become a legally protected characteristic, like race or sexual orientation, are frankly hard to swallow. Diet is a lifestyle choice, not an intrinsic human characteristic persecuted down the ages. If vegans are to be treated as an oppressed minority then so arguably should dairy farmers be, given the level of intimidation some now experience from self-appointed activists against milk production. |
| Calling Sitwell’s departure a dark day for free expression, as if he were some latter-day hero speaking truth unto power, is just as rich, however. It might seem draconian to lose your job over a dumb joke, when few of us would relish having every hastily typed email held up for the world to see. | Calling Sitwell’s departure a dark day for free expression, as if he were some latter-day hero speaking truth unto power, is just as rich, however. It might seem draconian to lose your job over a dumb joke, when few of us would relish having every hastily typed email held up for the world to see. |
| But freedom of speech does not imply freedom from the professional consequences of what is said. This was an email sent by the editor of a corporate publication, which is designed basically to flog the brand’s products. Sitwell is paid not just to deal professionally with contributors (whatever happened to a polite “thanks, but no thanks”?) and to avoid needlessly offending the brand’s consumers or advertisers, but to spot a commercial opportunity staring him in the face. | But freedom of speech does not imply freedom from the professional consequences of what is said. This was an email sent by the editor of a corporate publication, which is designed basically to flog the brand’s products. Sitwell is paid not just to deal professionally with contributors (whatever happened to a polite “thanks, but no thanks”?) and to avoid needlessly offending the brand’s consumers or advertisers, but to spot a commercial opportunity staring him in the face. |
| One in eight Britons is now vegetarian or vegan and a further 21% are flexitarian (sometimes veggie, sometimes not), according to a report released this week by – well, Waitrose, as it happens. The brand has just launched a vegan range, for heaven’s sake. Nelson was bang on the money when she wrote to Sitwell that veganism is having a moment and that even people who don’t want to make drastic changes to their diets might be interested in reading about “more healthy, eco-friendly” alternatives. What Sitwell’s employers could reasonably have expected him to grasp is that there’s a market opportunity here, and not just for selling tofu. | One in eight Britons is now vegetarian or vegan and a further 21% are flexitarian (sometimes veggie, sometimes not), according to a report released this week by – well, Waitrose, as it happens. The brand has just launched a vegan range, for heaven’s sake. Nelson was bang on the money when she wrote to Sitwell that veganism is having a moment and that even people who don’t want to make drastic changes to their diets might be interested in reading about “more healthy, eco-friendly” alternatives. What Sitwell’s employers could reasonably have expected him to grasp is that there’s a market opportunity here, and not just for selling tofu. |
| Changing the way that you cook and eat, even for just a day or two a week, means searching for new recipes. It means stocking up on new ingredients, experimenting with different spices and flavourings, and generally setting supermarket tills ringing. Whatever his personal preferences may be, Sitwell’s job was to stay abreast of changing foodie habits, not mount a grouchy one-man stand against them. Yet what really seems to stick in the gullet for so many of his supporters is precisely this idea of change, and the nagging insinuation it often carries that there’s something wrong with how things were before. Vegans touch such a nerve at least partly, I suspect, because deep down they make the rest of us feel slightly guilty. | Changing the way that you cook and eat, even for just a day or two a week, means searching for new recipes. It means stocking up on new ingredients, experimenting with different spices and flavourings, and generally setting supermarket tills ringing. Whatever his personal preferences may be, Sitwell’s job was to stay abreast of changing foodie habits, not mount a grouchy one-man stand against them. Yet what really seems to stick in the gullet for so many of his supporters is precisely this idea of change, and the nagging insinuation it often carries that there’s something wrong with how things were before. Vegans touch such a nerve at least partly, I suspect, because deep down they make the rest of us feel slightly guilty. |
| Third of Britons have stopped or reduced eating meat - report | Third of Britons have stopped or reduced eating meat - report |
| Leaving aside the moral queasiness that will always surround the killing of living things, it’s increasingly clear that eating less meat might be better for the planet. Only this week a WWF report on how humans are wiping out other species at pace highlighted the clearing of tropical savannah in South America, one of the richest sources of biodiversity on the planet, mainly to grow soybeans for animal feed. | Leaving aside the moral queasiness that will always surround the killing of living things, it’s increasingly clear that eating less meat might be better for the planet. Only this week a WWF report on how humans are wiping out other species at pace highlighted the clearing of tropical savannah in South America, one of the richest sources of biodiversity on the planet, mainly to grow soybeans for animal feed. |
| The stereotype of vegans being wan, sickly creatures is being challenged, meanwhile, by research such as this week’s study suggesting a mainly plant-based diet could reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. | The stereotype of vegans being wan, sickly creatures is being challenged, meanwhile, by research such as this week’s study suggesting a mainly plant-based diet could reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. |
| For all that, most of us will never give up meat and fish completely, let alone swear off cheese and milk and eggs. But I’d bet the lasagne that I’m cooking for supper tonight that as time goes on we’ll be eating more plants, more often; that within a decade or two, demanding meat at every single meal might start to look like the exception, not the rule. And as with behavioural change in life more generally, one day we’ll probably look back and wonder why on earth some of us found it quite so hard to stomach. | For all that, most of us will never give up meat and fish completely, let alone swear off cheese and milk and eggs. But I’d bet the lasagne that I’m cooking for supper tonight that as time goes on we’ll be eating more plants, more often; that within a decade or two, demanding meat at every single meal might start to look like the exception, not the rule. And as with behavioural change in life more generally, one day we’ll probably look back and wonder why on earth some of us found it quite so hard to stomach. |
| • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist | • Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist |
| Veganism | Veganism |
| Opinion | Opinion |
| Vegetarianism | Vegetarianism |
| Vegetarian food and drink | Vegetarian food and drink |
| Waitrose | Waitrose |
| Diabetes | Diabetes |
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