With
apologies to Richard Llewellyn
by
Les May
THE
last seventeen years of my working life included taking part in week
long biology field courses for young adults. We had to
teach them, make sure
they did not come to any harm and
feed them.
One
told us she
only ate meat, another had strict religious dietary requirements,
vegetarians were abundant, but we always managed. The one problem we
had was a young man who said he was a vegan. We explained that as
the field course was on an island off the Scottish mainland and an
islander would be catering for us, we
were not able to
guarantee that the food would meet his requirement. Eventually he
agreed to cater for himself.
Now
my attitude to people who say they are vegans is ‘whatever
floats your boat’.
But when I saw the
food he brought I could not help noticing that it all seemed highly
processed. Now I’m fairly catholic in my diet. Apart from
ritually slaughtered meat I will eat most savoury things. But I
would have drawn the line about eating what our vegan student was
happy to eat.
I
had forgotten about
this incident until I read an article in last Thursday’s Guardian
by the food writer Joanna
Blythman in
which she wrote:
‘Supermarkets,
global food manufacturers and biotech and chemical companies have
enthusiastically embraced Veganuary. Fast-food enterprises, formerly
seen as the nemesis of public health and the environment, have recast
themselves as their saviours. McDonald’s was feted when it launched
its first vegan
Veggie Dippers meal:
nuggets that contain around 40 ingredients,
many of which can’t be found in any domestic larder, served with
chips and a soft drink…..Just
when ultra-processed food manufacturers were being skewered for the
health damage their products cause, the plant-based push has given
them a get-out-of-jail-free card.’
Blythman’s
piece is perceptive, but where I don’t think it goes far enough is
that she fails to point out that many of the foodstuffs which can
best supply the protein in a meat free diet, lentils, soy beans,
chickpeas etc, carry the burden of lots of ‘food miles’ because
they are themselves imported. We could grow substitutes in our
climate. Field beans, sold as Horse Beans or Tic Beans for animal
food, grow well in this country and it is the introduction of these
into the west European diet in the early mediaeval period which is
credited with allowing
the population to grow. In
their present form they are an unattractive dark brown in colour.
The garden form is the Broad Bean which is larger and more
attractive. It was derived from the Field bean by selective
breeding. Further selective breeding could be used to produce a bean
with fewer ‘food miles’ which could replace our dependence on
imported pulses.
If
you want to tell the world that vegan food is more healthy and
switching to it will ‘save the planet’, it might be useful to do
a bit of homework. Blythman’s article is a good place to start.
You can find it at the link below.
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