Thoughts from the Abbey Kitchen

I've been staying in Glastonbury for a few days, with some dear friends who have a strong food ethic - local, organic, healthy, to say the very least. This is a very strong direction to approach food, but a different one to being vegan, and whilst there are a lot of overlaps, there's also some conflicts, or at least things to think about.

Dairy, and even meat, if local & ethical, are acceptable, and I can see that, and that works in health terms, too. It's a very contentious subject, but reading around there's a lot of evidence (and common sense/logic) that humans aren't set up for an entirely plant diet, and I'm willing to accept that. My reasoning has always been that I live ina city where everything is artificial, brought in and comes to me via a shelf in a shop, and in such circumstances I can apply other factors - we have the intelligence & opportunity (financial and otherwise) to apply compassion.

Meanwhile, some factors of the vegan diet don't fit in with that viewpoint - soya, for example. To be honest I've long been aware of this, and try not to rely on it, and will reduce consumption even more, balancing the food miles with the benefits of the food itself - perhaps I should limit my soya intake to fermented versions, and also look for more locally sourced soya (someone told me that Plamil use french soya?) or alternatives (oat or rice milk, although my previous experience of these hasn't been that positive).

I'm also aware that the very lable - 'vegan' means it's easy not to think about things individually. It seemed also rude to turn down honey when visiting Richard and Linda, who have just moved on to some land with a beautiful old orchard, and have bee hives, for example. It's easy to think 'that's not vegan' without thinking 'why do I choose not to eat it?'

Another interesting thing is other people's reactions to a vegan - their problem, not mine, but it's rare enough (although not that rare) to be alien, scary, a threat, even, as if it's a challenge to their own morality - which it isn't, and isn't intended to be. It's tedious when people immediately try to 'catch me out' in some way, in that proving I'm not vegan makes them feeling better, although it still seems strange in some way. I've also had people get angry with me as in some way they feel my presence is stopping them eating what they wanted to, assuming I'd in some way want to control what they did near me - not so, not at all. To be affected that would be to worry about what people think of me, and therein lies madness...

For the time being, though, I'm still in a city, I've been doing it (more or less) for twenty years. I never liked meat or eggs anyway, so any compromise would be minimal. Me being vegan won't change the world, either, in terms of the enonomic boycott, either, but I think it's still the best way to go, for me, now. If I lived in another time or place, if my food came through the kitchen above, it may wellbe different, who knows.