A part-time vegan’s guide to Veganuary

Eight tips on how to enjoy Veganuary without compromising on health of flavour!

Disclaimer: I am neither a scientist nor a vegan.

I am however someone who has been in a relationship with a vegan for almost three years now. Sufficed to say, my eating habits have changed somewhat. I eat far fewer animal products than before, and know much more about veganism than I did before. I am however not a vegan myself. I still eat eggs, cheese, butter, meat and seafood (although I don’t drink milk anymore save for the odd cappuccino), just a lot less of them, and often only when we eat out.

This is my second time doing Veganuary, and since so many people have signed up for it in the UK and across the world, I wanted to share my own recommendations on how to do it well, how to make it enjoyable, and, perhaps most important of all, how not to do it.

Here we go.

1: You will mess up.

You just will. You will invariably order a coffee with cow’s milk. You will order Thai or Vietnamese food and forget about the ubiquitous fish sauce. You will eat a cookie with milk chocolate. You will forget that honey isn’t vegan. You will drink wine which used fish bladders in the clarification process (look it up).

Don’t worry about it. Approaching this with a fantasy of purity will just induce anxiety and self-hatred. You are doing this for you and you alone. This should be an enjoyable process, and remember that even committed vegans who have been doing this for years still accidentally consume animal products. Relax.

2: Actually be vegan.

There is an almost overwhelming amount of choice on offer for vegans today, whether in shops, cafes or restaurants. Vegan meat, vegan cheese, vegan milk, you name it, they have veganised it.

Beware this bounty. A lot what I call vegan animal imitation products or VAIP are laden with salt, various forms of oil, and unpronounceable additives and chemicals that are designed to replicate the flavours and textures of the very food you are supposed to be eschewing. This should be treated as a time when you look beyond animal products and try and see how a genuinely plant-based diet can be nutritious and delicious and positively enjoyable. Eating nothing but sausages and burgers made from plants and chemicals is only a few steps away from consuming beer and Oreos and Pringles and claiming to be vegan (yes, they are all vegan).

3: Explore naturally vegan cuisines.

As a follow on from the previous tip, try and experiment with some of the cuisines that are more naturally vegan friendly and celebrate plant-based food. For example, many of the dishes of the cuisines of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are vegan by default, and the quality and variety and sophistication of what has been done with vegetables in these countries led the avowed carnivore Anthony Bourdain to declare that if he lived in India, he would happily be a vegetarian.

The same can be said for many dishes from South-East Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia) and if you are worried about leaving out fish sauce, you can simply add more soy sauce. You won’t get the same fermented funk, but it will certainly add to the umami.

Also, think about food that is vegan without advertising itself as such. For example, innumerable pasta dishes from Italy are a concoctions of tomatoes, garlic, onion, herbs, greens, beans, lentils etc.

Keep exploring. A quick Google search will show you plant-based dishes of amazing taste and sophistication from Mexico to Lebanon to Japan.

4: Vegan cheese sucks.

Sorry, but it just does. Well, OK, not all of them. But I would say that 99% of them are not worth it. Cheese is a complex, centuries-old, fermented food, teeming with bacteria and other flavour components. Cheeses made from nuts will just never be able to replicate this. Too many of them are oily, and have a strange, almost butter-like after taste. And again, one look at the ingredients list of some of them is proof that as far as health goes, the real thing is probably better.

However, they do have their place. Vegan cream cheese is pretty good, and cheese-y sauces made from cashew nuts and nutritional yeast are pleasingly similar to the real thing. Try them in pasta and use them to make tangy sauces for your vegetables.

5: Sauce! Spice! Herbs!

Many if not all of us know a vegan whose cooking looks as if the highlight of the meal is the washing up. We all know the jokes about vegan food, and the reason for that is that very often, vegans are their own worst enemy when it comes to convincing other people of its qualities.

I’ll put it like this: poor vegan food is a failure of the cook, not vegan food. Your kitchen is full of little helpers who can make the difference in taste when it comes to plant-based food. Use oil and herbs to make dressings for vegetables and salads, use soy and hot sauce for noodles and soups, and use spices for dal. There is no reason at all for vegan food to be bland or unenjoyable. All it takes is imagination, and some bravery. Go big! Add that second pinch of salt, shake the soy sauce in again, add an extra teaspoon of hot sauce. You and your friends will appreciate it.

6: Be consistent, be ethical.

Veganism has become a billion pound industry in Britain. Hundreds of thousands of people are either vegan, or regularly eat vegan food. And this has not gone unnoticed by the fast food industry. While some celebrate the fact that Burger King, KFC and McDonald’s et al are adding vegan options to the menu, in my opinion we should not reward these companies for noticing a new way to make money given the appalling role they have played and continue to play in the destruction of our planet and the appalling treatment of animals and workers across the world. If you want to eat out, try and patronise restaurants that are genuinely vegan and ethical (and good).

7: Read, read, read!

There’s never been a better time to be a vegan. Newspapers are full of recipes, there are dozens of magazines, and vegan recipe books are everywhere we look. But again, be selective. Unless fitness is your goal, or you have specific dietary requirements, avoid books that promote fitness (or worse, “wellness”) and focus on ones that just celebrate food and cooking with plant-based ingredients. And be sceptical. There is a lot of contested science out there when it comes to veganism and health and veganism and the environment, and the reality is that while there are many benefits to a plant-based diet, there is a great deal of junk science out there on veganism’s impact on your body and on the planet.

8: Take your B12.

The biggest issue with veganism as a long-term lifestyle choice is that it leads to a deficiency in the vitamin B12. This vitamin is vital for neurological function, and is only available in animal products. However, vegans can sidestep this by taking a B12 supplement, which can be purchased in any pharmacy or health food shop.

I hope these tips help. If you have any other questions, hit me up in the comments section!