Dialogue: Could be time to join vegetarians

By SANDY BURGHAM

Let's face it, having vegetarians over for dinner has always been a bit of pain. Should we mould the whole menu around these individuals who steadfastly refuse to bend their rules to fit in with others, or should we let them nibble on garnish while we poach them an egg?

And what do you do if they belong to the splinter group of vegans? Don't invite them, I say. We have a meat-and-two-vegetables culture and despite dropping the regularity of the customary roast in favour of experimenting with pasta, sushi and stir-fry, we expect people to eat a little meat, not believing that those pulses and nuts can really provide the satisfying goodness of a thick, juicy steak.

But it seems that our old habits are dying hard, literally, and our meat-eating pasts are catching up with us.

Like many overseas-experiencers of the 80s, I'm doomed. There I was, for about four years based in London in the late 80s to early 90s (the Danger Zone, it eventuated) wholeheartedly enjoying prime British beef, which I thought was among the most harmless things I was consuming. Damn those shepherd's pies my friends and I scoffed in pubs all over Britain. Little did we know as we tucked into cheap and cheerful British nosh, we were on a knife-edge. How were we to know that 10 or so years on we would be potential mad cows, for different and perhaps more serious reasons?

I guess it would have been safer to stay in New Zealand and eat the cattle that grazed on our clean green pastures. But then I would have had to contend with the dairy-free brigade warning me about the perils of eating cow. These days there seems little point in switching allegiance to lamb, given the rumour last year that there possibly was a mad sheep strain of mad cow disease.

Our friends in Britain must be tossing up whether they'd prefer to be low in iron or risk a foot-and-mouth and Creutzfeldt-Jakob combo hit. So this would seem as good a time as any to go for white meat only. On the surface this is an easy choice. Chicken is a delicious and inoffensive meat, but someone once told me that girls' breasts were larger these days because of hormones fed to chickens. While every cloud has a silver lining, when I think of the kids I decide to buy only organic chicken. But because of the price of organic chicken we are forced to suck the marrow out of every bone to get value for money.

I guess there is always pork, but, much as I love it, pigs don't get a good rap on the healthy-living front.

Maybe it's time to bite the bullet and join the vegetarians. But even the vegos can't rest on their laurels as they now have the "Is it organic?" issue to consider.

I could, of course, dump meat altogether, trim back on vegetables and stick to tofu, free-range tofu. But isn't tofu just soy? And wasn't there the soy debacle a few years back where mothers panicked about having reared their dairy-free babies on soy formula, only to be facing retrospective health warnings? And besides, did they know whether their soy was genetically modified? Yes, genetically engineered foods introduce a whole new world of food concerns.

My husband has been in Singapore, sampling the street food and discovering culinary delights in back-street restaurants down dodgy alleyways. His view is, who cares if he's eating dog, it's the most delicious food he has ever tried.

That's the twist to all our food neuroses. As a nation we love to travel and live by the adage, "When in Rome ... " While we may still think twice about tap water when embracing new cultural experiences, we throw ourselves into sampling the food, with no real thought of its humble beginnings.

Those smug vegetarians who gave meat a wide berth in Britain during my OE adventure might want to remember it was the post-Chernobyl era. So if the mad cows don't get them, surely the long-term after-effects of a nuclear fallout will. I am doubly doomed, of course, as I ate Chernobyl salad with my mad-cow meat over the period in question.

All this goes to show that the only thing sure in life is that we are all going to die one day, no matter what we eat.