Meat Eater to Vegan and Back Again.

How That Happened and My General Musings About Food!

This doesn’t happen to me often, but I wrote most of this already, didn’t save it and then lost it. Gutting.

Better luck this time, eh?!

Recently I wrote a blog about Vegan Aberdeen and in it, I mentioned that I was vegan but I’m not anymore. I was hoping to not just sell Aberdeen’s vegan restaurants to vegans but also encourage fellow meat eaters to give vegan food a chance. I thought that making it clear that I was a meat eater again now would help with that. Sometimes people are interested in my dietary ‘journey’ (sorry for using that word), but it’s often an awkward conversation for both parties. Conversations about diet can be divisive and inflammatory depending on who you’re talking to. I normally try to cut the conversation short because a) I don’t want to be boring and b) I don’t want to get myself in trouble. So, I’m going to try and get it all out here.

Phase 1: Teens to early 20s.

Right, so the first part’s easy. My parents eat meat, so I grew up eating meat. Simple. But, at some point during my teens I decided that eating something dead was gross and I stopped. Although, to be fair, it was probably a little more gradual than that. I just don’t remember.

Then, I booked a trip to hike along the Great Wall of China (not all of it, obviously). What has a trip to China got to do with any of this I hear you ask?! Well, this was back in 2006 and vegetarianism/veganism was less of ‘a thing’. I was worried that I wouldn’t find enough to eat alongside all the hiking, so I made a conscious decision to start eating meat again. I don’t think it was quite as easy as that, I think there was a mental barrier, but it was definitely the right decision. I remember the vegetarians in the party didn’t get the quantity or variety of food that the rest of us did. It all looked pretty difficult and depressing. Then when I got back from China I just kept going!

It’s funny because people always assume I’m veggie or vegan because, apparently I give off that vibe. Don’t ask me what that means, I don’t know! I’ve learned that a lot of prejudgements are based around what you eat. On my first day as a volunteer conservation warden on a Hebridean island I walked into the office to meet all the conservation farmers clutching my ham sandwich for lunch. I later learned that their opinion of me changed in that moment. They thought I was just another young conservationist coming along with big ideas and big opinions on how they should manage their land (I think they’d been burned before!) and just that ham sandwich made them slightly more open minded towards me. It gave me an ‘in’. I also found out that on a small island with very little new blood coming in it also made me more attractive! Who’d have thought a ham sandwich could do all that! Being vegetarian or vegan (or even assumed to be one) can lead to lots of assumptions about your character.

Phase 2: Late 20s in Aberystwyth University.

I’d just finished a year and a half working in conservation and went to do a degree in Zoology with Microbiology in Aberystwyth. At some point I started to feel a bit hypocritical. I was all about the environment and I said all the right things but I felt like I wasn’t doing anything to back those words up! The first thing I addressed was palm oil. I’m not going to go into it here but, essentially, I found out that broadly palm oil = bad! So, I cut it out. I started reading every label of every item I bought and I soon got used to what I could and couldn’t buy. Then, I read a lot of stuff about how going vegan was better for the environment and that ultimately it was more sustainable (not to mention better for animal welfare), so I went vegan. I say vegan, but I really became a plant-based eater. I still used leather because I thought that was better than using a plastic alternative, I still used natural wool because synthetic fibres are a big ocean pollutant and I was never really that bothered about bees making honey for me! I was also fairly relaxed in that if someone kindly made me a meal but had accidentally added a little butter into the mix, I would just graciously accept the food. I also distinctly remember my friend dropping a sausage on the beach and making moves to throw it away because it had sand on it. I had a quick moral conversation in my head about how I didn’t buy the sausage or ask someone to buy it for me, and how it was just going to go to waste so I brushed it off and ate it!

Anyway, I was originally meant to go vegan for a month to try it out and that turned into a year and a bit. I actually found it pretty easy. I quickly got used to it and it didn’t take me long to stop missing certain items of food, like cheese. It was probably made easier by the fact that there was a wave of people going vegan at the same time.

So that ticked along nicely until I developed a chronic illness in my final year of undergrad. To cut a long story short it just got to a point where it was more important for me to look after my body and just eat food rather than put restrictions on what that food was. I’d held some pretty classic plant-based opinions in that I thought anybody could go vegan, that everybody should and that it was pretty much a cure all (I’m face palming just admitting that). I lost count of the amount of times people told me to try going vegan or drink more water to help with my illness. I appreciate people don’t know what to say and they’re just trying to help but I now realise just how ableist those values are. Not everyone can go vegan. I was wrong and it is not that simple!  

Apart from it just being easier when I was really poorly, the other reason I swung from vegan straight back to eating meat (without stopping at vegetarian first) was that, for me, the dairy/egg industry has the same, if not larger ethical question marks than the meat industry…so my opinions are fairly black and white. I either choose to use animals or I don’t. I understand that people are vegetarian for lots of complex reasons though so it’s highly personal. You do you!

Phase 3: Early 30s at the University of Chester and Aberdeen.

Anyway, my chronic illness improved to a point where I was well enough to go and do my MSc in Chester. I wasn’t vegan anymore and I felt a lot of ex-vegan guilt! I felt like I wasn’t doing enough for the environment and I felt a bit hypocritical, so I started to adopt different eco-friendly habits. Eventually, that culminated in me going ‘plastic-free’ for a month and by coincidence that meant I ate vegan most of the time anyway. If I bought cheese or meat it was local and I’d get it wrapped in my little beeswax wraps. After my ‘plastic free’, almost ‘zero-waste’ month was up I relaxed a bit but a lot of the habits I’d formed were already ingrained so I kept them up until I moved to Aberdeen to start my PhD.

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Aberdeen is a much bigger city than Chester and I had to re-learn where I could buy grains etc… in bulk. It was tough and it was absolutely a lifestyle…as in I spent so much time sourcing and buying goods that were as waste-free/vegan/local as possible that it was pretty all consuming. If it was vegan it was often wrapped in plastic or contained ‘exotic’ produce, if it was local it was often meat or dairy, or it was in something non-recyclable/reusable, and similarly if it was waste-free it was often non-vegan, or least flown into the UK from some far off land. I started to find it really stressful.

It got to the point where I’d end up standing in a shop going through some sort of moral dilemma over whether to buy something. I’d be making all these hard decisions to go without stuff, or to save up to buy more eco-friendly versions of things, or buying things I didn’t really fancy eating but at least they fit into this system of rules I’d laid out for myself. Then I’d get to the till and notice folk who’d bagged their bananas in plastic or loaded the conveyer belt with meat and single use plates for a summer BBQ and I’d just feel heavy looking at it all. I’d wonder what the point was of me trying so hard and I’d feel angry about it! I distinctly remember having a little cry down the phone to my mum on a train platform once because it was so hot and I was so thirsty but neither the cafes, shops nor toilets were open so I couldn’t refill my water bottle. There was however a vending machine with bottles of water inside. I just couldn’t bring myself to use it.

For me, it was just unsustainable. I was cutting a lot of things out of my diet, being ‘eco’ dominated my thoughts and I just wasn’t happy.

It took a certain transition period but I’ve now totally chilled out. I obviously still try to make eco-conscious decisions but if I want a pepperoni pizza I have it, if I’ve forgotten my reusable cup I still get the odd takeaway coffee in a single use cup, if I buy a fast fashion t-shirt which was made in China because I love it then I try not to have an existential crisis over it. I feel so much healthier and happier and sourcing a new environmental alternative is now a joy not a chore. If you could put my diet into a triangle I’d say that now I eat mostly vegetarian, then vegan (partly because I’m really shit at cooking meat), then meals with meat. It works for me and I think that works for my body. I think the only time I feel self-conscious about my eco credentials is when I go to a vegan cafe. I have this moment where I look myself up and down and notice my leather boots and bag or my lack of reusable cup because I’m scared of pre-judgement! It’s irrational, I know!

I just think that as normal folk on the street we need to be kind to each other and do the little things that we can to make the world a better place…without beating ourselves or others up. I don’t think that being an eco-martyr like I was, was really helping anyone!

I’d just say if you’re thinking about going vegan or vegetarian or plastic free then you go for it. Good on you. If you want to stop being vegan for whatever reason, then you do you. If you want to start having vegetarian Monday or meat free lunches, whatever, it’s all good. Maybe, like me, you’ll go through a few of those things before you settle and maybe I still have a few changes in me yet!