If you’d asked me in my teenage years what my ideal dinner would be, it would have been a juicy steak cooked medium to well done. Or maybe lamb chops and mint sauce, or a tender, slow-cooked beef stew. And I loved a late-night McDonald’s chicken nugget now and then. So I never anticipated that casually picking up a book about factory farming at the age of 23, while visiting a friend abroad, would put me off meat so intensely that I’d vow to be vegetarian for the rest of my life.
Overnight, Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals – an excellent investigative read into the profoundly ugly business of mass meat production – turned my brain inside out, and I couldn’t believe I’d been so ignorant all this time.
I’d always imagined that you had to be an animal-lover, or fundamentally against the idea of humans eating animals, to be vegetarian. Yet, I realised that it was the appalling manner in which the animals were being reared and killed, plus the pollution it caused for the planet, that was so disturbing to me. I knew that if I lived on an organic farm and could eat the cows and lambs from the field, I’d feel ok eating meat again, but this fantasy was far from my urban, supermarket-dominated daily life. So, I was done with meat. Forever.
Well, not quite forever. For a whole decade I avoided meat, and I found it pretty easy. I simply didn’t want meat anymore, and couldn’t see how anyone would. I ate lots of vegetables, pulses, and sometimes meat replacements like Quorn, figuring these fake meats were protein-filled and healthier than their meaty counterparts. The only thing I found difficult sometimes was feeling like an inconvenience when going to friends or family (particularly my Polish grandmother for whom vegetarianism was a mortal sin) – previously I’d eaten everything, and now I had to admit that I wouldn’t be able to stomach the roast they had planned.
Then, the day after my grandma’s funeral in the summer of 2022, as my family gathered around a bonfire roasting pork sausages and sharing memories of her, I realised I wanted desperately to eat a sausage.
I think it was down to the grief mingled with memories of all the meat she’d cooked me as a child, plus a growing awareness that I was perhaps lacking some iron and protein in my diet. And then, a growing sense that perhaps meat replacements weren’t all that healthy afterall.
Yes, lots of red meat isn’t great for your health, but neither surely are lots of highly-processed meat alternatives, with their high-sodium content and artificial colouring. The downsides of ultra-processed foods have been getting more coverage in recent years and it is hard not to see a lot of meat-alternatives as falling into this camp. I started to see that vegetarianism wasn’t a black and white case of always being healthier.
I am far from alone in switching back to meat after a long time. Actor Martin Freeman this week, who said on the Dish podcast that he’s done with vegetarianism after four decades. The 52-year-old Sherlock star said he opted out of consuming meat as a teenager because he was “never comfortable” with eating animals, but he’s now changed his mind after worrying that meat replacements are “very, very processed”.
I wonder how Freeman will get on with being a meat-eater after spending the majority of his life abstaining from it. For me, even after only 10 years, eating meat again was a mixed bag.
The high-quality Polish sausage from a nearby farm was delicious, but I couldn’t leap instantly back into a carnivorous life. A few months later, I had an organic roast lamb cooked by my mum, and although the flavour and smell was almost overwhelmingly grim at first, I was after a while able to enjoy small bites. A steak made me feel ill, and gave me a bad stomach for a day – too severe on my gut – but also I found the act of cutting into the flesh, and the bloody juice, a bit much, psychologically.
While stopping at a service station on the way to a weekend trip, I wondered whether this was the time for a nostalgic chicken nugget, but when I got to the counter I found the idea off-putting, and I still do, now. In general, it was strange eating meat, and if I thought about it for even a moment, I was horribly aware that I was chewing through an animal, and would mostly stick to the safety of plants.
Equally, I have since my decision, ecstatically wolfed down plenty of meaty meals – generally the ones where I know the meat is high-welfare, although also a pepperoni pizza or two – and a steak every few months now goes down a treat.
I admire people who stick to vegetarianism, I’m not proud of the fact that I ditched it, nor do I think I’m now doing meat-eating in the most climate-and-animal-friendly way possible. But the balance I have tried to strike is that when I do buy meat to cook at home, such as a chicken breast, it’ll be organic and as high quality as I can afford. As a result of going for the best products I can find, I end up not buying much, because, well, I’m not raking in the cash like Jeff Bezos.
Most nights I’ll still cook vegetarian. It has also meant that when I go out for a nice meal, I will sometimes indulge my carnivorous side if I fancy it. I’ve not had any meat replacements since this switch – which I now realised used to sometimes give me a stomach ache – and I don’t miss them one bit.
In the end, it can be hard to find the perfect balance between eating well for yourself, for the planet, and for the animals, in every meal. Instead I’ve made peace with everything in moderation, for better or worse, and I feel overall healthier for it. I’m okay with my mish-mash of logic when it comes to my food choices, and at least I know my grandma will be looking down on me in glee as I tuck into that beef stew tonight.