No-meat update - April

6 April 2008 - interesting couple of days. I visited Norwich on Friday for a business trip. The lunchtime pub was interesting - several starters marked as veggie on the menu but NO "main meals" - the best was under the "baguettes" section - one cheese-based baguette with chips. Mmm. Last night we had a curry - the occasion was fine and I was comfortable with the choices - however, again it was interesting to note that there were no vegetable curries on the main sections of the menu, merely as side dishes or as part of the fixed menu for one, two or four. There's still not a lot that's convincing me things have moved on in the past twenty years. The quest continues.

30 March - three months in. As fully expected, eating at home hasn't proved a major problem as we've never been big meat eaters... BUT we haven't had non-meat eaters join us at home for main meals (not sure how we or they would deal with that) and I'm still concerned that there are probably more animal-derived products hidden away in "everyday" food than I'm aware of.

Work has proved easier than I thought. Sandwich lunches have been straightforward, as has been eating out at pre-planned meals. Eating out, unplanned, both at work and at home hasn't been so easy.

Even in London I'm starting to think that mainstream food chains aren't so well set up for non-meat eaters as I'd previously thought. "The vegetarian option" can be just that - one alternative on a list of half a dozen or more meat options - not quite but almost "take it or leave it". I've been planning a meal out for a special event for later in the year in and it's becoming evident that many places only have a single veggie option or, worse still, none listed and merely "other dietary options can be catered for" (in other words, speak to us on the quiet if you're a freak). Given that market forces are pretty powerful and retailers and restaurants are driven by them in the end, I'm assuming that non-meat eaters are clearly in a very small minority, hence the relatively small percentage of options on most restaurant menus. During January I joined some sixty other men at a curry night and I was the only non-meat eater - and, again, I had to have a "quiet word" to arrange something suitable, with no discount even though vegetable curry is a whole lot cheaper. Thankfully, because I'm still eating fish, I have more options open to me. Eating out conclusion thus far - I need to move to Brighton - our day in Brighton was a fabulous experience food-wise.

Interesting that vegetarianism is now moving into the environmental space on the basis that a veggie-based diet has a significantly smaller carbon-footprint than meat-based diets.

The other big dilemma I'm struggling with is that non-meat options frequently consist of cheese-laden dishes which presents problems with my need to drive down my cholesterol levels.