If the way we eat now is bad for our health, bad for animal welfare and bad for the planet, is veganism the answer? That’s the key question that Catherine Oliver of Lancaster University pursues in the latest addition to the What is it for? series.
In this episode of the podcast, Catherine tells George Miller why she hopes What is Veganism For? helps reframe the often-polarized debate around veganism by showing the role it plays in wider justice movements, talks about how veganism has gone from fringe to mainstream in the past decade, and describes how vegan eating (including banana blossom fritters) can be a joyful experience.
Listen to the podcast here, or on your favourite podcast platform:
Scroll down for shownotes and transcript.
What Is Veganism For? is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £8.99.
Catherine Oliver is a lecturer in the Sociology of Climate Change at Lancaster University. A geographer interested in research beyond the human, she works on historical and contemporary veganism, the ethics and politics of interspecies friendship through human-chicken relationships, and multispecies ethnographic research, most recently with seabirds. Follow her on Twitter: @katiecmoliver.
SHOWNOTES
Timestamps:
01:10 – Why did the seemingly straightforward question, what is veganism for, appeal enough to write a book?
04:51 – Broadening the perspective on what led to contemporary veganism
07:00 – An invitation to take the idea of change on board in a serious way
09:51 – How do you see the aim of the book?
13:05 – Looking outward into the ways in which veganism can be practised and the various other things with which veganism can fruitfully intersect
15:00 – Can you say something about your own particular trajectory that led to you writing this book?
17:51 – Is it becoming easier to become vegan?
21:48 – Should the emphasis be on eating a bit less meat and leaving veganism for later?
26:00 – The complications of big corporations
29:32 – Beyond the binary of vegan or not
33:30 – In what ways is vegan eating potentially joyous?
Transcript:
(Please note this transcript is autogenerated and may have minor inaccuracies.)
George Miller: Hello and welcome to the Transforming Society podcast from Bristol University Press.
My name is George Miller and I’m the editor of a new series from BUP that launched last spring: over the next few years What is it for? will explore the purpose of a range of institutions, beliefs, ideologies and other key components of the contemporary world: from war to philanthropy; nuclear weapons to free speech; conspiracy theories to the Olympics.
The aim is not to come up with easy answers but to stimulate constructive debate – these are questions that are worth asking in order to think about what made the present the way it is and how the future could be better.
The latest title to join the series is What is Veganism for? by Catherine Oliver, who’s a lecturer in sociology at Lancaster University. An early reviewer of the book called it ‘a superb volume that takes us on a journey to the past, present and future of veganism’.
The easy answer to the question of what veganism is for, of course, is that it’s to reduce animal suffering and thereby benefit the planet. But as Catherine’s book shows, there’s a lot more bound up in it that that. So when I spoke to her recently, I began by asking her what it was about this apparently straightforward question that had appealed to her enough to want to write a book about it.
Catherine Oliver: Yeah, I think that one of the biggest things that intrigued me actually was that question of what is veganism for? That kind of for? Yeah, so this idea that veganism is always against something creates this oppositional position of veganism being antagonistic towards mainstream conversations. And it’s actually that switching of the question, almost reframing the question, it reframes what we’re asking of veganism, outside of the debates we might see on TV or the radio when veganism comes up, it’s always posed as this debate, someone against someone else. And what that omits is all the parts of veganism that are life-affirming or positive or the different kinds of worlds that vegans are building out of, yeah, a resistance, but it’s also not just against, it’s for.
So it was that reframing of the question that initially intrigued me and what that allows me to do is reframe veganism in some ways, and the maybe familiar debates to some people can be entered in different ways.
GM: I can entirely relate to that desire to get beyond the sort of simplistic opposition, because that’s another thing that motivated this series was the desire to get beyond those, because so often the debate comes down to three or four minutes on the radio or the TV and it is just a head to head confrontation, and it doesn’t really generate much light, it’s just a lot of heat.
But in getting beyond that sort of simplistic opposition, I guess you quite quickly run into the question of how settled, of how easy it is actually to establish what veganism is for.
CO: Yeah, precisely. And it isn’t a simplistic thing. Veganism has a long, long history. Veganism and relatedly the consumption of plants and refusal to eat animals for moral reasons has a long history. And I think often it’s almost posed as if veganism came from nowhere. It just appeared one day, all these vegans just thought it’d be cool to change the way they eat. But that’s not it. There’s long and multiple histories, very, very, very many different histories around the world that shape what veganism is.
And often the one that’s returned to is this British definition of veganism, because that’s where the word came from. It’s where the organised form of veganism through the vegan society, where that long history is. But I think it’s important that we also challenge that and show that there are other histories in other cultures, in other parts of the world.
And not just histories, actually contemporary practices of veganism that aren’t, like no two practices of veganism are the same. There’s different motivations. They don’t look the same. The extent to which someone might be vegan is open. And even what a vegan is, that question is still not at all settled. And that’s one of the biggest debates within veganism itself is what actually is veganism? What counts as veganism? So yeah, definitely not settled.
GM: And you mentioned there the origin of the word in the middle of the 20th century in Britain. And I got a very clear sense from the book that you definitely want to get beyond that or get, you know, get further back than that and expand the horizon that you’re looking at so that we don’t just be fixated within that particular historical moment, that particular impulse, that particular geographical location, and actually look at all sorts of different things that have fed into contemporary veganism beyond that. That’s a, I guess it’s a sort of spurious origin moment because it’s drawing on things that actually came long before it and have taken very different forms since it. So in a way, it’s interesting and useful to be able to say the word was coined here, but actually, your book is sort of really broadening out the perspective, isn’t it?
CO: Yeah. And I think, you know, historical facts, that’s how many of us learnt history in school, right? This is the fact. And the fact is the word veganism was coined in 1944. It’s catchy. It’s easy to remember. And actually they’re presenting something that’s, oh, but let’s unpack that a bit. It’s far more nuanced than that. People have been eating plant-based food for centuries. People have been practising plant-based forms of moral eating elsewhere. And even today, you know, people around the world who practise what we would, what looks like veganism may not call it veganism.
And I talk about this in the book, I think the opening chapter of the book about some African returns to plant-based eating, but they would never define themselves as vegan because that’s not a word in their language. It is not something they identify with, but does that mean we shouldn’t include those cultures in our historical understandings of, let’s call it veganism for argument’s sake, you know, just so we know what we’re talking about? Absolutely not. Absolutely. We need to look beyond that.
So it’s about opening that, opening that historical imagination, I suppose, as to where things come from and how ideas travel.
GM: And I guess also opening the cultural imagination as well as the historical, because the book makes clear that there have been all sorts of different food cultures and history, and it’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking the way that most people eat today is, is just how, you know, it’s just how it is. It’s, you know, it’s what they’ve maybe grown up with and what they’re used to. But in fact, the way our diets have changed in the last 50, 100, 150 years, I mean, they’re constantly changing.
And I guess that, I guess that’s an opportunity for veganism, because if you can sort of show that, then perhaps you, you admit of the possibility of change rather than, because as you say, there’s a lot of opposition to, there’s the debate is often characterised as oppositional, and it’s about, this is the way we, this is the way we’ve always eaten, versus this being invited to consider radical change. But in fact, the book makes plain that the way we’ve eaten has, you know, it’s been changing throughout history for all sorts of different reasons and therefore, you know, change is something that the people have been able to take on board and perhaps, your book is a sort of invitation to take that idea of change on board in a serious way.
CO: Yeah, absolutely. There’s nothing permanent about the way we consume, the way we eat. Someone 100 years ago, if they saw our supermarkets today, would be baffled by the way we eat, totally baffled. And that idea that meat is this kind of cultural tradition is also, you know, not true, it might have traditionally been served at celebrations, but it’s not for the most part been a staple of diets around the world, at any point until now, because it’s only now that we have the kind of intensified food systems, intensified transport systems, the technology to consume in the way that we do.
So yeah, I guess we like to think the way that we live is just permanent, right? We live in it. So it’s normal to us. But if we can get beyond that and think, oh, actually, you know, it’s not that long ago, that everything was totally different. And I’m not saying it was better 100 years ago. I mean, you know, that’s not what I’m saying. But it allows us to say actually, things can still be different. There is still hope for change within the food system.
And more broadly, because veganism isn’t just about food within society, there is still room for manoeuvre. And having that imagination is really important to imagine beyond contemporary systems, whatever they might be, whether food systems, economic systems, if we stop being unable to imagine, that’s the problem, I guess, in some ways that that becomes the sticking point.
GM: Now, your book does not go in for shock tactics, and shock tactics are part of the armoury, the repertoire of veganism. And you can understand that because a lot of our food system involves us turning a blind eye to what’s going on, sort of either wittingly or unwittingly, you know, being ignorant of how food is produced. And my understanding is that a lot of people switch to veganism because because shock tactics do work. So I wondered, how would you describe your tactics, if tactics is the right word?
I guess you’re going all out to make converts. That’s not the primary objective, you know, to strong arm people towards being veganism. But I wondered how you saw the purpose of the book, because it’s not just to provide a little bit of background knowledge. So, but between those poles of, you know, filling in the background versus shock tactics, how do you see the aim of the book?
CO: That’s a really good question. Shock tactics is actually what made me go vegan a decade ago, it was seeing undercover footage of factory farms and other things that sent me vegan. But there is recent research that shows while those shock tactics can work initially, and actually some activists, vegan activists go back and watch those videos. I personally don’t because they’re too upsetting for me. And Iknow and I feel like I don’t need to keep seeing these kind of horrific situations. But they can, people can become normalised to them, or that it just stops having that impact.
And I suppose this book isn’t too, isn’t even, I would love people to go vegan off the back of reading this book. Obviously, that is one of my intentions in the work that I do in the writing that I do. I want to convince people that it’s possible to be vegan, it’s healthy to be vegan. It’s good to be vegan. It’s actually joyful, liberating to be vegan. But that’s not the only purpose of the book.
The book isn’t just for vegans, it’s not just for vegans or people who hate vegans. It’s for people who just want to know more about this social, cultural and political force, and how it’s embedded in the world around us. It’s not just in our food systems. It’s in our cultures, it’s in our science, it’s kind of entangled with other forms of activism. And so my hope is that when people read the book, yes, they might be convinced more than they were before to become vegan. But it’s also that they’ll carry on researching and even if they don’t become vegan, to have some a better understanding of what veganism is, that it’s not just this refusal to eat animals because we’re being difficult, but it’s embedded within a kind of wider social, cultural and political ambition for a better world.
Because ultimately, that is what veganism is aiming for, a better world for people, for the planet and for animals. So, yeah, it doesn’t rely on shock tactics, but it is to inform and I suppose an invitation is how I would describe it if I was pushed.
GM: Yes, I kind of pushed you! And I guess it also wants to emphasise the plurality of veganism, doesn’t it? It’s not doctrinaire in saying, you know, these are the tenets of veganism and unless you adhere to these tenets, you’re a flawed vegan or you can’t count yourself a vegan or you know, you’ve got to strive harder. It does acknowledge, although as you say, it looks beyond simply questions of diet. It’s also very outward looking into the various ways in which veganism can be practised and the various other things with which veganism can fruitfully intersect.
CO: Yeah, definitely. And I think it’s, whether in this book or elsewhere, it’s not about policing what people do or trying to discipline, I suppose, people to become vegan or guilt people into it. It’s to show that this is a practice of justice, a practice of ethics and a political practice, and that it shouldn’t be seen as separate from or lesser than other justice movements. But it’s rather part of that wider umbrella.
I mean, the intersections between veganism and the environmental movement are becoming clearer, although there is still a lot of resistance within environmentalism to veganism. But actually veganism has a massively important history intersecting with feminism, with the queer movement, with rights for black people. These aren’t separate movements. And that’s not to, I think importantly, that’s not to equate those as the same thing, but to look at how similar logics underpin the oppressions we see in society.
So it’s not, yeah, it’s not a policing of what veganism is, but actually an exploration of what veganism can do.
GM: And I wondered in your personal case, what was it, I mean, I know you’re interested in lots of other things too, but what was it that made veganism a particular lens through which you wanted to approach various other related questions, as opposed to, let’s say, animal rights or feminism or other forms of resisting oppression. What was it? Can you say something about your own particular trajectory that that sort of led to you writing this book?
CO: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I’ll have to think about it for a second. Yeah, so I guess when I became vegan, for some people, I suppose that other kinds of activism opened their eyes to veganism. But for me, veganism was that primary motivation. So it was only once I’d become vegan. And that’s not to say I wasn’t interested in anything before, but that was really the catalyst for me, seeing kind of how oppression was linked across society, across the world, how all of these different ways that society enacts violence, let’s say, aren’t distinct from one another.
And so in this work and other things that I write on, that becomes, or that’s always central to the work. So it doesn’t matter what I’m writing about, but that central ethics and politics of justice for everyone. I suppose the human, the beyond human, the environment is, yeah, it’s always just read through that lens, I guess, because you forget when you’ve been vegan for a long time, how important that is initially to your identity.
I think I write about this a little bit in the book. When you become vegan, it changes your whole world, because your whole worldviews change. So all your relationships are affected, the way you see the world’s affected, the way you interact with other people, the way you consume, all these things change. And I guess over a period of time that becomes habitual, so I don’t necessarily think about being vegan every day. It doesn’t affect my life really in any way, unless I go somewhere that doesn’t have any food, and then I get annoyed and hungry.
But yeah, it’s a really interesting question, because when I began doing this work 10 years ago and became vegan 10 years ago, it was such a central point to my identity that came up in every conversation. And so it shapes the way I’ve thought. I’ve been vegan a couple of years longer, but about as long as I’ve been working kind of in academia from my PhD onwards. And so as long as I’ve been writing. And so I guess it is just foundational to the way that I think, because it is such a huge identity change that just totally changed your worldview.
But yeah, good question I’ve not thought about for a long time.
GM: As you say, you talk in the book about that sort of transitional phase where you are both increasing your knowledge about veganism and how animals are exploited, the manifold ways in which they’re exploited, and also the practical, you know, learning to live as a vegan. Can you say something about that a bit more for listeners about that experience and maybe also whether you think that’s got easier in the 10 years since you went through that phase, both in terms of access to knowledge, which of course we hope the book will help, and also access to information in other forms and just the day to day practicalities. Is it becoming easier to become vegan, do you think?
I know that’s conditioned by all sorts of, you know, questions of access and economics, I know that it will vary according to who you are and where you are and all sorts of things, but maybe just some general comments on how you see the trend there.
CO: Yeah, so I guess speaking from where I am, which is in the UK, yeah, things have got massively, massively easier. And I think that’s echoed, I’m not going to say everywhere in the world, because I’ve not been everywhere in the world, but that is echoed certainly across Europe, that veganism hasn’t become mainstream, it has become more visible, it’s become more popular. And with that, it has become massively easier to be vegan.
I suppose social media existed 10 years ago, but it wasn’t, I guess, so entirely consuming, let’s say, all consuming. And so when I went vegan, it was a lot of kind of word of mouth, still a lot of the recipes that I got were from old books or the vegan society used to send out recipe cards. Every month, the shops, I used to have to go to health food shops to get textured vegetable protein, which used to have to soak overnight. It was, yeah, I mean, I kind of miss those days because things are too easy, you know, it doesn’t feel like a struggle at all.
Whereas today, you know, you walk into any supermarket, almost any restaurant, and you can eat. Cosmetics are much easier, vegan cosmetics are much more common, vegan clothes, vegan, you know, you can get almost anything and this is kind of related to it. The environmental benefits, I suppose that there’s been a turn to consuming more environmentally friendly. And also the kind of, yeah, people becoming more conscious because they have access to information that they didn’t have 20, 30 years ago.
So in the past, the way that you would, I guess, get information is through subscriptions to places like the Vegan Society and local meetups. So you’d meet up in cafes and meet other vegans. Now it’s like the click, I’m starting to sound a bit like old, but it’s click of a finger and you’ve got millions of people to talk to. There’s, you know, Facebook groups with thousands of people who will tell you, all you have to say is I’m going to this little town, and people will tell you 100 places to eat within like a 10 mile radius. So just the landscape of what is, you know, what is out there has just changed so radically.
And people know what a vegan is now, like the vast majority of people who I meet know what a vegan is. That wasn’t the case 10 years ago. And so even though vegans are relatively small in number still, there is this kind of real growing visibility, this growing power. Yeah, where it is just, I mean, it is just easier practically. And I think that also means it’s easier, maybe emotionally, mentally to become vegan, because it doesn’t have that same difficulty, that same stigma attached to it that might have been 10 years ago. And you can, yeah, just access all of this information so easily.
GM: Do you ever wonder whether there might be a kind of natural plateau for the number, you know, the percentages in society who are willing to embrace veganism? And if you’re taking a kind of utilitarian view of reducing animal suffering and damage the planet, might it be the case that if vegans were campaigning for meat reduction, that might that might actually achieve a greater benefit for the animal population and a greater benefit for the planet than perhaps converting I mean, I know it’s I know it’s not as black and white as I’m presenting it but I’m just trying to get this sort of idea of whether if there’s always going to be an intrinsic difficulty or at least as far as we can, you know, as far as the eye can see is probably going to not be the mainstream way of eating. Maybe the emphasis should not be on veganism, although we’ve said it’s got flexibilities, it’s stricter than vegetarianism and it’s stricter than an omnivorous diet. Is there an argument that perhaps the emphasis should be getting the broader population just to eat a bit less meat and, and, and leave, leave the sort of veganism for, you know, for later and sort of convert people more gradually?
CO: I think both a kind of radical commitment to veganism and a wider encouragement of meat reduction is I think they can exist together. And I think one of the places this becomes really obvious is actually when we think about the future of veganism. So the reason veganism has grown, I guess you can’t it’s a bit chicken and the egg, isn’t it? So did veganism grow because it got easier or did it get easier because the numbers grew? But whichever it is, this, this kind of technological advancement in vegan products, whether cosmetic food, food is the big one. It’s not just about food. Food is the big one.
These technological advancements in food have made it easier to be vegan. And so even though, you know, those products aren’t just for vegans, like there’s no way McDonald’s would be making a vegan burger just for vegans. Possibly because lots of vegans boycott McDonald’s anyway. So that, you know, these products aren’t being made for vegans. And when we think about the future of veganism and I talk about the kind of debates themselves in the book, but what we’re seeing is that the real possibility of technologically mediated meat on the horizon. So, you know, meat, identical products that can be packaged and sold.
Now those things aren’t that market isn’t targeting vegans because vegans are already doing fine without those kind of technological meats. So when we think about the future of what are, you know, going to be vegan products in the sense that they are vegan, that is aiming at that meat reductionism. And so one of the long-standing debates within veganism is whether we need to be abolitionists or kind of welfareists and do this kind of long term reductionism.
But I think the two can uncomfortably, I’m not saying it’s a comfortable sit in side by side, but they can sit side by side. So we can advocate for developments in technology with the caveat that those are going to be owned by people, big corporations and aren’t going to radically transform the food system. But they are going to reduce animal suffering and replace, you know, the place of meat in some of our food systems.
So I guess looking into the future of veganism, it’s maybe going to get more complicated to have those two positions of abolitionism and a kind of reductionism to sit side by side, because to my mind, I can’t see how we can have one without the other if our goal is to, I suppose, change the food system and make things better for the planet and primarily for animals. So, yeah, I don’t know if that answered your question.
GM: Yeah, I think it recognises the difficulty, but I think you put it in very neatly, welfare versus abolition, which is what I was struggling to articulate. So I think it’s very useful to see those as not being incompatible, but mutually reinforcing. But you also raised a really interesting point about what it means for the food system and the part that big corporations play, because we know there’s a lot of coverage in the press at the moment about the dangers of highly processed foods in people’s diets. And there have to be misgivings, there have to be qualms, I think, about being too reliant on the big food corporations doing what is going to be healthiest and also best for the planet. So you might be reducing animal suffering, but you might be creating both ethical, environmental and health problems further down the line.
So that’s also something that you talk about in the book and that veganism is clearly wrestling with. Do the big corporations that may well be the same corporations that have been feeding animal products produced to the lowest standard for years, are they coming along now and saying, oh, if you’ve got ethical or health concerns, we can also sell you this. So that’s also something that’s another complication in the future.
CO: Yeah, veganism for many people is also anti-capitalist, not for all people. I mean, there’s plenty of kind of vegan capitalists as well. But ultimately, you know, at its heart, veganism wants justice. And if we think about the kind of veganism that I imagine, although that isn’t the only one, it can’t just blindly kind of follow the path of let’s get on board with the big corporations. They still need to be that challenge.
And I guess in some sense, you might say, well, can it get any worse? You know, it’s already so, so terrible for the environment. Can it get any worse? But I don’t think we can just say, no, it can’t get worse. So let’s just do it. Let’s just put our kind of faith in these corporations who’ve really screwed the planet for decades, a lot longer. So, yeah, I guess this is where you get to that point that you might initially dismiss veganism as, you know, this tiny thing that’s only 1% of the population. But actually, it allows us into really complicated conversations about the future of the planet.
And I think often when we enter into those conversations, there’s an assumption that vegans are just going to have. Well, as long as it ends animal, the killing of animals, let’s do it. But actually it’s way more nuanced than that because that isn’t the only consideration in veganism. It’s not just this one track thing. And I think this is, or I hope this is what I kind of do in the book is reposition it as it’s not this fringe idea that these weird people just don’t want to eat animals.
But actually we need to take veganism seriously if we want to think about how we’re going to survive on this planet into the future, because it does offer some real, and I’m not saying it’s the only solution, I’m definitely not saying, I mean, there’s so many things that need to change, but it’s definitely needs to be part of the kind of complex solutions that we’re thinking about when we’re thinking about the future of food, when we’re thinking about justice and when we’re thinking about the environment.
GM: I guess what you’re saying is beyond its immediate impact for the people who embrace it, it opens up an ethical and an intellectual space and shows it to be a reality. And that that has got to be useful for the debate rather than not existing, and us all just talking about eating a little bit less meat. It shines a light on these big questions in quite a stark way, but also it also has a practical impact. And so in those respects, it’s got a really useful role to play, it seems to me, in the wider conversation. So it’s not about a binary. Are you going to become a vegan or not? It’s about the kind of questions that veganism opens up.
CO: Absolutely. And I think that’s where some of the kind of tension, maybe let’s call it tension, comes from, is that there’s this assumption by non-vegans in these debates that vegans are judging them, that we don’t want to enter into debate. It’s not that, I think. I think many vegans do want to discuss. They want to be actually meaningfully taking part in these conversations, but with the kind of recognition that we’re not going to budge on that central ethical principle.
And so the debate is usually around whether that ethical principle and practice is valid. Right. So the debate between vegans and others always comes back to, well, should we be vegan or shouldn’t we be vegan? Actually, we need to move beyond that and say, let’s take that out of the equation. Let’s just let’s have other conversations. And I think this is one of the things that frustrates me a lot around in the kind of discourse around veganism. Is it always we’re stuck at that? We’re stuck at should we be vegan or should we not be vegan? When there’s a hundred other conversations that we can be having, if we move beyond that, you know, in what ways can veganism help conversations around how we do reduction or advocate for alternative food systems. But if the debate always comes back to: should we or should we not be vegan? Then it doesn’t get anywhere.
So, yeah, that’s my position, if that makes sense.
Not take it out of the equation, but let’s move beyond that. Should we or should we not?
GM: Yeah, I mean, it’s what you said at the beginning is getting beyond the oppositional or the purely oppositional as a way of addressing this complicated set of questions and seeing things as nuanced and having, you know, lots of the dimensions we’ve talked about this afternoon there. They’re far from clear cut. They’ve got they’ve got complexities. And I guess what your book is doing is trying to show the core principles, but then also the questions that they flow into and why it’s not, you know, why it’s more complicated than I said at the beginning. It’s just about reducing animal suffering and having an eye on the environmental benefits.
So that the book is kind of trying to, you know, without needlessly complicating it, because I think the book is very clear and approachable, but it’s introducing people to some of the richness and the texture of the debate and the nature of veganism, I think.
CO: I hope so. That would be amazing if it did that. And I’m looking forward to people reading it. And, you know, ultimately my tagline is going to be go vegan, you know, because why wouldn’t it be? But even if it’s even if people don’t take that from the book, what I want them to take is let’s get into these conversations that move beyond that. Let’s have these conversations about what veganism can do in our world and what it means and what. Yeah, it’s not just this straightforward thing of do it or don’t do it. It’s an opportunity to imagine different futures.
GM: And I know you’ve said a couple of times it’s about more than just diet, but I want to finish on the food because you also said it’s about joyousness. And I think that’s a good note on which to end. So tell me a little bit about the joyousness for people who are listening to this, who perhaps have a rather, you know, dour view of what eating as a vegan might entail. And in what ways is vegan eating potentially joyous?
CO: Oh, you know, I think I mean, I love eating. That’s one way it’s joyous. I love to eat. But when you often when people become vegan, and this is true for me, I had to learn to cook. And I was I was 20. So I was eating, you know, beans on toast mostly anyway, because I was an undergraduate student. This whole new world opened of weird and wonderful ingredients, recipes that allowed me to experiment with food that I would never have imagined doing in the past, like deep frying banana blossom to recreate. I’ve never eaten fish, but to recreate the idea of like fish and chips from the chip shop.
There’s a whole world out there of experimentation, playfulness that you can do in cooking, but also in eating. And I would say, if anyone’s listening and they haven’t been to their local vegan restaurant and they’re not vegan, just go and see the amazing things people can do with food. It’s incredible. It’s not just for vegans. This food’s for everyone.
But I would also say the thing that changes when you become vegan around eating is the way you share food changes. So you want to invite people, I guess partially it is that impulse to like come try my food. It’s not disgusting. It’s nice. But you invite people to share in your food practices with you, invite people out. You’d like to show them new places, show them new things. And actually, you know, it’s like one of life’s small joys to take someone to a vegan restaurant and then go, wow, this is so good. This is I can’t believe it. It’s such a joy for people to get through those preconceptions.
And it also allows you to connect with other vegans. And this was very true when I became vegan. I hope it’s still true now for people transitioning to veganism. But there’s a whole community out there who will welcome you to their cafes, their community events, their kind of social events. And you get to connect with people who share your values and be in spaces where that kind of common ground is already there.
So, yeah, I think that that transition to veganism has so many benefits and a lot of the focus is on how isolating it can be and how hard it can be. Actually, it’s great. Like I love food and it’s yeah, I get to cook something new almost not every day, but, you know, every week I like to try new recipes and it’s kind of endless. It opens your mind to so many different ideas and ways of using ingredients that are just, yeah, amazing. It’s great being vegan.
GM: I remember you in the early stages of research the book telling me all the cookery books you’d bought as you know, as research.
CO: Yeah, my cupboard’s overflowing. I have so many cookery books. So, yeah, it’s been a good couple of years trying out all sorts of new things.
GM: Well, I hope people on the strength of listening to you, your enthusiasm today will go and read the book and be nourished by that and also go and be nourished by deep fried banana blossom or whatever they gravitate towards. Thank you very much for joining us today. It’s been, it’s been great to hear you talk about it and the ideas that fed into it.
CO: Thank you.
What Is Veganism For? is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £8.99.
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