If you’re a vegan you’re gonna get pissed off reading this. But it is what it is. There’s no moral mission here. There’s no polemic. I’m not advocating anyone do this, that or the other. I’m simply stating some neutral facts about what happened with me.
So did you know that I used to be a vegan? Actually scrap that. I wasn’t a vegan. I was a Lee Kern. I still am a Lee Kern. I just happened to eat a diet that can be labelled vegan as it cut out meat, dairy, honey and any of that sort of stuff. I always hated the idea of saying, “I’m a vegan.” The idea that the food you eat is the most interesting thing about you and that it’s how you want to label yourself to the world seems a little tragic to me. The food you eat is how you want people to see you? Not your thoughts, ideas or dreams? But you want people to see you in terms of what you put in your mouth and poo out of your bum?
Ok. Good luck to you.
Anyway - I used to be a vegan. For three years.
I’m not anymore.
When people find out, they ask me how much I’m back on the meat?
My answer’s quite simple: I would bite out the throat of a giraffe and use its neck as a straw to drink the blood from it’s beating heart. That’s how much I’m back on the meat.
I would dip a pony’s eyes into a chocolate fountain of blood and eat them as a dessert.
I’d boil a kitten and some vegetables inside the pouch of a kangaroo and then eat the kangaroo pouch kitten stew and the kangaroo.
I’m back on the meat.
That said, let me make one thing clear: all the arguments for veganism are great. I can’t counter them. Vegans have won the arguments. They’re the best arguments. But between the idea and the reality falls the shadow. And in that shadow you’ll find me eating a burger and a hot dog and a chilli con carne.
I grew up with meat and going into adulthood this didn’t change. I liked my steaks bloody and I had little respect for anyone who didn't appreciate cheese.
I even liked the meat that a lot of people act silly around: liver, heart, tongue, gizzards.
Actually I LOVE that stuff. How can anyone not like it?
Chicken hearts? Delicious meaty mushrooms with a lovely rubbery texture.
Tongue? Like a luxurious, velvety corned beef. (Corned beef means different things to Brits and Americans. I mean it in the British sense).
Gizzards? Oh my goodness - it’s the meat with the bounce. There’s no texture like this. It’s actually bouncy. A gizzard is part of a bird’s stomach. As birds don’t have teeth to tear apart food they swallow stones into their gizzard. The gizzard will squeeze and contract to use these stones to grind down food it swallows. Anyway, it makes for an awesome, bouncy, soft and fibrous texture with a uniquely subtle taste. If you have it in chicken soup it’s the best. The Jewish word for the gizzard is pupik, which translates literally as belly button in Hebrew. Anyway, it’s fantastic. Get that little stomach in my stomach.
I’ve also eaten all manner of horrific things in France. Snails, thyroid gland, brains, testicles, frogs legs, calf’s pancreas. My French mate tells me that the reason why the French make good lovers is cause they’re not scared to put anything in their mouth.
Ooh la la and sacre bleu.
So anyway, I hope it’s coming across that I really like food and that this includes a healthy serving of meat.
But then something happened.
I became a complete and utter wanker and developed a seed of empathy and compassion for animals. It was such an annoying thing to happen. I started to think it was cruel to kill animals and eat them. What right did I have to take their life? There’s no humane way to take something’s life - not if it doesn’t want to be killed? I absolutely hated developing this seed of empathy for them. But I couldn't ignore the thoughts and the feelings and the thoughts and the feelings won - however I may have thought or felt about it.
So I became a vegetarian for two months.
This was fairly difficult but not insurmountable. The occasional longing for meat lasted about a fortnight, which was easy to overcome with my first evangelical flush of motivation pushing me onward.
As for the style of vegetarianism I embraced - it was truly awful. I mainly ate cheese, bread and potatoes. Just stodgy stuff. I was a vegetarian that didn’t really eat vegetables. It didn’t lead to the health benefits I had hoped for. But I was still a vegetarian and happy enough.
However, one day I looked into how the dairy I was eating is produced and it became difficult for me to justify being a vegetarian if reducing cruelty was my motivation. Manufacturing dairy seemed probably crueller than meat production itself.
So there was only one way to go: I made the full plunge into becoming vegan and ate a totally plant-based diet.
At first it was weird. Every plate seemed like it was missing something. Yeah I had veg - but where was the main part of the meal? Where’s the thing that goes with the veg? I felt cheated every dinner.
Then, to overcome that, I went through a phase of trying to find ways to recreate the meat-based meals I used to eat - but in a vegan style.
At that time, vegan cheeses and simulated meat meals were awful and not massively available.
It still wasn’t quite cutting it.
Then I realised that in order to move forward I had to give up my old way of understanding food and embrace a completely new style of cooking.
And this was the break through.
No longer did I try to recreate my meals of old. Instead I embraced vegan food and what that food wanted to be. It worked and it was easy for the longest time.
The benefits were amazing. I was the healthiest I've ever been. I lost weight simply because I could no longer eat loads of unhealthy rubbish. Nearly everything shitty and bad for you has got some milk or gelatine in it’s ingredients.
And the food was delicious. I loved it.
A super moment was the realisation that I was out of the death industry. It felt amazing. About three weeks into eating vegan I was walking down the street and I genuinely felt this weight lift off me. I was grateful to not be involved in the killing of animals. Deep down most of us know it's horrific what has to happen to get our meat - but it's something we stifle in our brains. We bury the dark truth in order to protect our habit. We invent words like "bacon" and "beef" to sanitise from our language the fact that we eat our co-inhabitants on earth. It genuinely felt life enhancing to not be part of that.
The most difficult thing to deal with had nothing to do with eating vegan itself. The most arduous challenge was the incessant questions you’re asked when people find out you eat vegan - most of them ridiculous. For some reason, if you’re vegan you’re more likely to end up on a desert island and be faced with the dilemma of whether you kill a pig in order to survive.
Worse still are well meaning friends suddenly thinking you’re mentally simple and unable to speak English when eating out. They’ll speak over you, trying to communicate to the waiter on your behalf and interpreting back what he says.
But apart from these small annoyances, it was all good.
Then at some point something just happened within me. It wasn’t a single moment. It was an accumulation of micro-moments and feelings that built up inside. The truth is I did miss meat. I did feel like I was missing out now and then. I stopped eating meat largely for reasons appertaining to cruelty. But I’m not an idiot - I did know how good steak tastes. Sometimes my mind and body really wanted meat. Added to this was the low level disconnection and alienation it created between my family and friends. I wanted to share what they were eating. What I used to eat with them. What we had always eaten. What I’d eaten since a child. What my parents and grandparents and their parents before them had eaten. I felt disconnected from myself and my heritage and family meals. I wanted to eat chicken soup and cholent and viennas and herring and the millions of gorgeous desserts served with every holiday meal. I wanted to be myself. I wanted to be who I’d been my whole life. I wanted to embrace the food that had actually built my body. I started to feel like I was repressing myself - like someone with a repressed sexuality trying to deny who they were. The game was up. I knew the truth in my heart. I was a meat-eater trying to pretend he was vegan.
It wouldn’t go away. It just built and built within me. As healthy as my vegan body was, it wasn’t healthy for my mind or spirit to live with the kind of repression I was now experiencing. And as much as I didn’t want animals to experience misery, I was feeling miserable.
So I chose me over the animals. Selfishly and unashamedly. One Wednesday afternoon I simply thought fuck it. It was simple as that. I got in my car and drove to the KFC drive thru and ordered a chicken variety meal. I parked up and ate the chicken and felt nothing. Didn’t feel bad at all. No guilt, remorse or regret. Don’t even feel regret over what a dirty way to break my meat fast it was: sat eating greasy fried chicken with my hands in a Honda Civic parked by the road. I even drove back and ordered some extra hot wings and parked up in the same spot again, cars going past me as I gnawed on a bone that could have been a rat for all I knew.
I felt no guilt, shame or remorse. I accepted who I am. I’m a meat eater.
And so I started eating flesh again. And I continue to eat meat. I actually eat less meat than I used to, but that’s neither here nor there. I eat meat and I’m happy to do so. I made peace with a little bit of cruelty and selfishness existing in the world and within me. The animal kingdom is full of creatures being bastards to each other. They’d eat me and not be plagued by guilt or remorse. I wasn’t gonna beat myself up for having some overlap with creatures I’d evolved from and share DNA with.
I know we humans have noble aspirations and an angelic side that competes with our animalistic side. But I thought fuck it. I’m not gonna be at war with myself. Let the two sides co-exist. I’m not gonna deny who I am. If I wanna eat animals, I’m gonna eat animals. Fuck ‘em. Sounds harsh, but what else can you say? At least I’m being honest about the fundamental attitude it takes to eat another living thing. Maybe you say some prayer of gratitude to the animal for giving you its life? It didn’t give you its life. You took it and you didn’t ask. Fuck ‘em is what ultimately underpins the decision to put a living thing in your mouth and eat it.
Obviously I would like there to be as little cruelty and suffering as possible in the consumption of animal products. But you can only go so far with this. There’s a reality you have to accept: no animal wants to be killed and eaten. No animal actively seasons itself and jumps into a frying pan because that’s how it wants to spend its afternoon.
So we have to accept that taking animal life will inherenly involve cruelty and suffering. But I’m at peace with a world where creatures kill each other for food. One day it’ll be my turn to be eaten. Hopefully not eaten alive by hyenas or piranhas, but rather, when dying of natural causes, the worms and bacteria will eat my body when put underground. I’ll be a giant human crouton in a big bowl of earth.
So that’s it. I was a vegan but now I eat meat and I’m happy in my own skin and happy to eat the skin of other creatures if crispy. It just is what it is. There’s no polemic here. There’s no judgement. I’m not telling people what to do. I’m not advocating for one thing or the other. I’m just telling you my story. I still think veganism has got compelling arguments. I simply can’t transcend my desire to eat meat and the pleasure it gives me. If they can create laboratory meat that is indistinguishable from the meat I currently eat - then I’m on board. It’s the meat I’m into - not the taking of a life and animal cruelty. Until then I’ll eat whatever’s on my plate and won’t feel too bad about it.
בתאבון
Bon appetit!
Get stuck in!
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I eat a mostly plant-based diet but I cannot stand self-righteous vegans. Yes, vegans make really good points, both about cruelty and how wasteful animal farming is (and bad for the planet) but my attitude is that it's better for lots of people to eat less animal-based food and to be mindful of how it's produced, than for a small percentage to be vegan. However, I have radically reduced my blood sugar eating a plant-based diet and a lot of research points to animal fats (not carbs) as the culprit in diabetes - so for now, that's what I'm doing. But, at some point, I may decide living longer isn't all that important to me and I may become a meat-eater again - I mean, with each passing year, life gets more miserable, right? In seven years I'll be 70, do I really want to see 90? But either way, I'm not going to be an obnoxious ass about it. OK, I may still be quite an obnoxious ass, just not about food.