It Just Happens to Be Vegan: Eating Without Overthinking
There’s a quiet freedom in letting taste lead the way. Eating good food for good food’s sake seems almost rebellious in a culture where eating habits are tied up with ethics, rules and identity. But great food is just that: it’s about simple pleasures, such as comforting stews, perfectly spiced curries, weekend fry-ups, and sweet-tooth satisfaction.
Who cares if the stew is made with lentils, the curry is veggie, the fry-up contains faux meat or the cake skips the eggs and butter? If it hits the spot, none of this needs defending or explaining. Satisfaction achieved, plant-based or not.
Why is it then, there are countless tales of restaurant walk-outs and poor reviews due to an establishment’s vegan credentials? Veganism has long been (on the whole, wrongly) associated with militantism and arrogance, but if you’re after a good-quality burger, just enjoy it, and leave your preconceptions at the door. No-one’s been ‘duped’ by enjoying a banging burrito and then discovering it was vegan – it just happened to contain no animal products. It says nothing about them as a person, apart from that they recognise delicious grub. Discovering your burrito was vegan is not a scandal, it’s just lunch.
Enjoying good food means not attributing meaning to every mouthful. Much of the resistance comes from expectation: the presumption with plant-based food is often that something is missing, and yes, the joyless iterations exist, we’ve all met a flavourless sausage, and we don’t need to pretend otherwise. But this mindset can get in the way of enjoying what’s on the plate. The cries of ‘I don’t like vegan food’ are meaningless when those shouting the loudest are munching through a bag of chips or devouring some tomato pasta – vegan food is everywhere, and it’s for everyone to enjoy.
Plant-based or omni, we’re all animals, and there’s something grounding about going back to basics and just being hungry, eating something and enjoying it. And in that space, vegan food doesn’t need to prove anything – it just needs to be delicious. Which, increasingly, it is. And a really good meal has a funny way of making ven the most determined sceptic go very quiet indeed.