'I felt myself succumbing to the preaching vegetarian'lynda giddens

So it’s safe to say I’ve joined the masses entering the world of Vegeanuary, Janetarian, or however you want to put it: I’ve gone veggie for a month. That’s full blown, by the way, none of this pescetarian stuff. Why care about such an article, you might ask? Perhaps the same reason I started this escapade in the first place; it’s happening everywhere. I prepared myself to smugly declare my vegetarianism on the first of January, only to find that five other friends had already done so before me. At first I was disappointed in my apparent lack of creativity in my chosen New Year’s resolution, but eventually I began to see the slow social conformity as a far more interesting phenomenon.

Take a moment to think about the number of vegetarians you knew five years ago, a number you know now. It might be a change in the age or size of a social group, or it might just be the subtle impact of Facebook posts, tweets, articles on climate change, or videos of chicks crushed to death, all worming their way into your guilt-ridden mind. We’re a product of this age of ‘Cultural Enlightenment’, where we can see the impact of our actions on the planet, and so easily voice our opinions. You can’t touch a cup of soy milk without flashes of the Amazon rainforest burning.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but not even these were enough to convince me. Instead, what really pushed me over the vegetarian edge was an unfortunate run-in with a vein-filled corned beef sandwich. It’s no doubt I am a meat-lover and always swore I would never turn to the earthy-coloured side. But as I vicariously chewed on the little rubbery vein, I felt my meat-eating days come crashing down, every bit of gristle, every crushed chick, every acre of Amazon rainforest, every guilty McDonald’s. I was finished. Suffice it to say, reactions to my new vegetarian mantra were not fully positive. Non-veggie friends saw me as venturing to the dark-side, one filled with smugness and hypocrisy. My mum’s first reaction: “Oh, Finny, why? You’re not becoming one of those smelly political vegetarians?” Smelly and political? It felt like my tombstone had already been written and soon enough it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe it was the tofu or Quorn chicken, but the next time an old friend saw me she remarked on how I smelt like “our school cafeteria’s tomato soup”.

As for the political side, as much as I tried to resist, I felt myself succumbing to the preaching vegetarian. Even as I write this article I’m researching new, seductive material on depleting fish stocks and deforestation. The change from a meat-heavy diet to a leafy-green one certainly felt like a shock to the system. As someone who takes part in a variety of sports, I was particularly concerned for my energy levels. And for the first few days I did feel hungry, tired and snappy, while dreaming of succulent pieces of pork (though I blame the doubled intake of cheese for that). Not to mention that I was heckled with random bouts of the shits. As weeks progressed, I started to see light patches in my dark, broccoli-filled mind. Energy levels rose. My dire culinary skills were fit only for DepressingMeals.com. But vegetarianism and bad cooks don’t go well together, unless you’re happy living off carrots and cheese toasties. Forced to familiarise myself with the infamous ‘pulses’, I now keep a stash of said quinoa and lentils up my sleeve, ready to hurl into a pot of boiling water with vegetable stock cubes, yelling “pulses for all”, at the expense of angry and indignant looks from my host and or guests.

I have reached the end of my month as a vegetarian and I still feel like a bit of a cynic inside, not just because my new ‘home smell’ is that of garlic and tomato soup, but because I’ve always questioned the numbers game behind it. Can one person’s choice really make a difference? How did my awkward rejection of the family friend’s Sunday roast really help the planet? The truth is, no one really knows the individual effect. And there always seems to be more to do. This whole month I’ve been told that to really help the planet I should go vegan, and after watching the infamous Cowspiracy, my own redundancy as a cheese-eating vegetarian became abundantly clear.

What I do know is that there is an explorative fun behind the change, and a weird sense of solidarity with other veggie-eaters. And like every social movement, it just takes the first few dominoes to fall before the others come down too. If everyone reading this went veggie for a month, maybe we’d see a difference. Your change might cause others to change. The age-old argument: it’s in our ‘nature’ to eat meat, is understandable. I like the ‘sabre-tooth tiger-killing hominin’ as much as the next. But in reality, we in Britain are more the ‘killing hours in the office’ type hominin. From blubber-based diets to the tuber-diets of the Pacific, the ‘natural’ diet of the human varies and adapts across the world. I can see that I’m becoming my own worst nightmare: a preaching vegetarian. But I’m going to stick with it, and I beseech thee – join me! It feels great.