Veganuary isn't a fad or trendy diet - it's a chance to live a more ethical life

It is common knowledge that giving up or cutting down on meat and dairy is the right thing to do for the sake of our planet. Veganism deserves better than eyebrow-raises from the media

Two days into Veganuary and the head-scratching confusion over just exactly what veganism is continues. The perception of veganism as a diet or passing fad has somehow clung on in the health pages of our newspapers, in cookery columns, and in the miniature portions meted out to vegans in pubs across the land.

There is a continual debate in the media about whether ‘the diet’ is healthy. This is beside the point. There is a stream of misinformation designed to trick people into believing that vegetarianism and veganism are simply not possible. This madness must stop, and it’s extraordinary that it has endured this long.

It is, or should be common knowledge by now, that giving up or cutting down on meat and dairy is the right thing to do for the sake of our planet. Bush fires are raging in Australia; the Great Barrier Reef is seriously degraded; Antarctica is melting into the sea. Yes, lacking vitamin B12 is bad for me, but – not to get too Greta Thunberg about it – so is the loss of an area of rainforest the size of Latvia.

Making the personal choice to live more ethically deserves better than these eyebrow-raises from the media. What we need instead is more information, more attention paid to ‘the diet’, and better questions. Such as: why isn’t the government doing more to change the way we eat, given that the overwhelming majority of climate science has been repeating for years that reducing meat intake is crucial to the survival of our ecosystem?

It’s fairly remarkable that – barring the work of Meera Sodha in the Guardian – our media is still so averse. For instance, a recent episode of Masterchef: The Professionals paid lip-service to veganism with one ‘plant-based’ challenge that seemed to irritate and confuse the judges (“how are you going to get flavour into this dish without using any animal fats?”), and then it was back to the usual business of making lamb rump three ways. One of the occasional judges on the show publicly identifies as a vegan but eats meat on television. This isn’t good enough.

Of course, ignorance and ineffectuality on the subject are nothing next to the outright aggression of certain high profile figures. For some frothing figures in the media, such as Piers Morgan, the encroachment of veganism into public life represents nothing less than a new step in a culture war.

For the right wing and retrograde, veganism is an attack on family values, masculinity, common sense and tradition – one of those movements that, along with feminism, racial equality and queer rights, sometimes goes a bit too far (such as the ruling today by an employment tribunal that veganism is a belief protected by law).

This situation leads to a strange disconnect in our public life, where what is a known and necessary phenomenon is underreported, misreported or misrepresented. That comes on top of an already massive generational divide: roughly half of all vegans are aged 15 to 34, compared to 14% of over-65s. This means that there’s a lack of proper guidance, and the sense of veganism as fringe and cultish perseveres.

Things are getting better: fast-food chains such as Greggs don’t want to miss out on a buck and celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver have recently put out books focusing on plant-based food. But what we need is not a handful of nice new recipes, so much as books showing us how to revolutionise our food habits entirely – how to replace the puddings we were brought up on and the evil celebratory roasts we still remember the taste of – and adapt to a whole new life. Vegans are hungry.

Veganuary is a tolerable endeavour, which apparently leads to people taking up veganism seriously, but it also hugely participates in the public perception of veganism as faddish and juvenile virtue-signalling. Granting ‘the diet’ a modicum of respect, and wider, more educated coverage in our media, would be a good start.