Being vegetarian may partly be in one’s genes. Photo / 123rf
Being vegetarian may partly be in one’s genes. Photo / 123rf
OPINION:
Two strokes of the steak knife and I’m in need of a time-out. I haven’t had to chew a mouthful with such intense concentration for more than six years.
In the intervening time there’s been the occasional mild panic, usually courtesy of a veggie sausage at a hotel breakfast: “Are you sure it’s not meat?” I demand of my amused tablemate. It’s been so long that I can’t recall how much mastication real muscle needs. Tackling a steak requires a sense of ritual you just don’t get from forkfuls of goat’s cheese and squash risotto.
The news that, according to a study published in the journal PLOS One, being vegetarian may partly be in one’s genes, made me scoff. For more than 30 years I was a recalcitrant carnivore who resented being mistaken for a vegetarian, just because I was a girl with a weird name. That was until January 1, 2017; the day I gave up meat. A piece of Parma ham straight from the packet, a Christmas waif. And I was done.
The reason I gave up meat was that I was jaded and fed up with it. Triangular sandwiches of disjointed chicken: rhomboid slivers of smoked salmon between plastic sheets: rectangles of meat on cellophane trays: it all suddenly sickened me. Everyone seemed to be chomping mindlessly on meat.
Everyone seemed to be chomping mindlessly on meat. Photo / 123rf
In the genes?
It’s a reaction that’s at odds with the new science, which found three genes linked with vegetarianism and another 31 genes that are potentially associated with the trait. The scientists believe that the driving factor for food and drink preference is not just taste, but also how an individual’s body metabolises the material.
“While religious and moral considerations certainly play a major role in the motivation to adopt a vegetarian diet, our data suggests that the ability to adhere to such a diet is constrained by genetics,” said the study author Dr Nabeel Yaseen, professor emeritus of pathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in the US.
Has he finally found the reason why the UK has four times as many vegetarians as our French neighbours? I’d say boeuf to that - after all, weren’t we once known as les rosbifs?
When it comes to eating meat, I’d say pervading culture and society prefigure our choices, rather than taste and metabolism. Most self-defining vegetarians state three reasons for avoiding meat: animal welfare, health benefits and environmental concerns.
My own conversion was, yes, an awakening. Doing my training as a yoga teacher, for which many of my fellow students were vegetarian, as well as studying the concept of ahimsa (non-violence) made me feel that there must be a better choice out there. And so I stopped.
Boudicca increased her intake of pulses and vegetables and developed a fondness for more Middle Eastern-style dishes. Photo / 123rf
Full of beans
Making the transition from châteaubriand lover to champignon chomper was surprisingly easy. Where once I’d eaten steak at least twice a week and enjoyed easy suppers of cheap chicken livers (I really was a red-blooded carnivore), I upped my intake of pulses and vegetables and developed a fondness for more Middle Eastern-style dishes. I’d always mocked the pub bean-burger option, but now it aligned with my values. So we made friends.
And the big surprise was that I really didn’t miss meat. I remained self-conscious about thrusting my opinions on others. “How is the steak?” I’d inquire, politely, of friends. Like John Le Mesurier’s Sergeant Wilson, I’d say: “Would you mind awfully...”, when asking a host to provide a vegetarian option. As if asking for a meal composed of vegetables was a riddle for the ages. If I am completely honest, a little part of me quietly enjoyed the righteousness of it all. I disdained the so-called “flexitarians”, having their right-on values and eating them.
And then the vegan propaganda machine went into hyper-drive. Simple vegetarians, such as myself, all of a sudden seemed pedestrian. Unappetising highly processed vegan substitutes became the order of the day. At its extreme, friends would praise burgers made from gluten that seemed neither tasty nor particularly healthy. A colleague who had once enjoyed KFC was now on the Facon (fake-bacon) Diet; proof, perhaps, that junk is genetic. Call me contrary, but I started to wonder if eating meat was so bad after all.
Unappetising, highly-processed vegan substitutes became the order of the day. Photo / Impossible Foods
In my day job I was fortunate enough to meet people who cared about nature and animals, but also were farmers. On a day spent racketing up hilly fields in a battered Land Rover with Rosemary Young, author of The Secret Life of Cows, she admitted she’d only ever eat her own animals. I met farmers like John Lewis Stempel who talked about how his grandfather would cry when sending his animals to the abattoir.
The world is full of muddles and contradictions. There is suffering wherever you look in the food chain, whether you are a red-blooded carnivore or a bean-loving vegan. And so slowly the electric fences I had erected around meat and fish started to come down.
Gone fishing
First came oily fish, concerned that by avoiding it I may have been storing up dementia for the future; lacking the omega-3 DHA required for maintenance of normal brain function in adults. While some of the benefits have been called overhyped - fish-loving Finland has high levels of dementia, possibly due to mercury levels in fish stocks - but I felt safe placing fish that was low on the food chain, tins of sardines and mackerel, into my shopping basket.
Boudicca felt safe placing fish that was low on the food chain, tins of sardines and mackerel, into her shopping basket. Photo / 123rf
My partner suffered a tendon injury that only abated once we started to eat fish. And so the tide slowly turned. Yes, I racked myself with middle-class guilt about fish stocks, but inviting us for dinner became more simple for my mother-in-law.
Meat, though - the two- and four-legged land-roving kind - was not something I missed. I’d grown to love chargrilled broccoli, whole roast cauliflower and juicy aubergines; vegetables that perform when given centre stage.
I never felt the ineluctable tractor-beam of a meat meal deep down in my DNA. Although a vegan friend confessed he gets his occasional fix from culled wild venison (a meat so unpopular that he feels he’s doing nature a favour). Maybe the scientists are half-right?
What did change for me was moving to the countryside during the pandemic. I watched my neighbour José have loving shouting matches with her stubborn ewes. I learnt how, during lambing, she would bring cold lambs back to life in the warming oven of her Aga. I saw how strong the will to shepherd can be. How human it is.
At a village barbecue, while my peers tucked into local sausages (from a village farmer) and I ate incinerated veggie sausages and burgers, I realised the absurdity.
Meanwhile, no animal suffered as much from poor PR as the cow. I found myself writing articles in their defence; irritated at how UK farming is lumped together with its hellish North and South American counterparts.
Meeting UK farmers intent on restoring landscapes and soil health through mob grazing, such as Abby Allen at Piper’s Farm in Devon, showed me that, unless you support those trying to make a difference, we risk being left with no other model or choice than the intensive, soy-fed one. Of course, it is a huge privilege to be able to eat higher-welfare, grass-fed, ethically sourced meat. The “less but better” argument can sound very Marie Antoinette.
Human health-wise, the case for meat is complex. High-nitrate meats have been linked to colorectal cancer; recent research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds a correlation between red meat consumption and the onset of Type 2 diabetes in later life.
Research has shown a correlation between red meat consumption and the onset of Type 2 diabetes in later life. Photo / Javier Sánchez Mingorance
On the flipside, grass-fed beef is rich in omega-3. Regular consumption of small quantities of meat is widely believed to be good for overall health. People who live in the so-called “Blue Zones”, where the human healthy lifespan is the longest, eat small amounts of meat. Tim Spector, the dietary guru du jour, has reduced his meat consumption to some local, organic grass-fed red meat or a roast chicken as an occasional treat once or twice a month.
Selfishly, I wondered what I was missing out on, health-wise. And so I found myself tucking in with friends at the Tytherleigh Arms on the Devon/Somerset border. Their meat is sourced from Bonners butchers in Ilminster, and is in turn taken from grass-fed local herds.
Few are doing it better. I know because I’ve tried others since. A steak at a very fine establishment in Cornwall this summer was a distinct disappointment, and on the whole I feel let down by what meat-eaters are offered on a regular basis.
Because of this, I haven’t found myself embracing meat in the way that I thought I would. My digestion and my tastebuds seem to have adapted to a vegetarian diet. This means that I sit at life’s table somewhere between the meat-eaters and the vegans as they argue the benefits of their favoured diets.
I can’t help but think that a great deal of this debate is really about identity politics. Meat eaters love to taunt vegans, and the latter like to look down on the former as narrow-minded bigots. If the science is indeed correct, perhaps we can call a truce?
In the meantime, my tip for both sides would be the following. Meat-eaters, next time you think: “It’s not a meal without meat,” check whether that’s really true, or if you’re just not very good at cooking vegetables.
And vegans and plant-based people, before you chew people’s ears off – metaphorically, of course – ask whether a diet for which you need the knowledge of a dietitian to get your iron, zinc, vitamin B12 and fatty acids is really achievable?
In an ideal world, I believe now that we should be pursuing a culture of meat-eating that respects animals and our health, taking only as much, as a population and as individuals, as we truly need.
One thing is for certain, you won’t catch me tucking into a grey-looking factory-farmed chicken sandwich from a supermarket any time soon.
