What do you do when your teenage daughter comes home from school and announces she is a vegetarian? Nothing, of course, if she merely wants to eat rice and beans rather than lamb. But what if her decision means she is not just following a private predilection but has joined a movement and is declaring war?
Vege-warriors are not content just to munch their carrots, they want to convert the whole family into rabbits. They cannot stand living in a house in which the fridge contains a pork chop.
Clearly the normal eaters have to mount a defensive action and soon, for the war is hotting up. Last week is was revealed that a survey conducted on behalf of the Releat Company, which specializes in vegetarian foods, had found that more than two million people in this country are now total vegetarians. The company's founder predicted that in 20 years half the population will be following a vegetable-based diet.
The tactics to be employed will depend on the type of vegetarian. The daughter is propelled by concern about animals. She feels that they should not be killed. Give her A Feast in the Wild, by animal specialist Russell Kyle. The book's thesis, much simplified, is that there is no better service one can render a species of animal than to kill and eat them providing their rearing, preferably in the wild, is managed properly.
Why are there so many pheasant in Britain? Because we shoot and eat them. The huge numbers of cows and chickens on our little island are not the result of any innate cunning or strength they may have, but of carnivores tucking into coq au vin and boeuf en daube. Once a species has economic value, there is an incentive to rear and look after it.
Mr Kyle points out that we are really rather laggardly about killing animals. Though there are more than 200 species of wild large herbivore in the world, we have domesticated fewer than two dozen. He holds out the tantalizing delights of ostrich, capybara and, especially, guinea-pig meat. Long popular in Peru, where 20 million are currently being reared, guinea-pigs taste like rabbit.
The Kyle thesis will not convert the daughter instantly, but it does disconcert simple-minded animal sentimentality. Follow it immediately with a dose of St Paul wrenched out of context (I Timothy 4): it warns of "giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devilsâ•”commanding to abstain from meats which God created to be received with thanksgiving".
The survey reported that new (wealthier) adult vegetarians are motivated by health - their own, rather than that of the animals. They too can be a pain. The more bellicose are unspeakably bad-mannered. When normal eaters have declared vegetarians to dinner, they naturally serve their guests vegetarian food and even eat it themselves. How many vegetarians do the equivalent when they entertain normals?
The less-bellicose can sometimes be quietened by facts. Try this: "Animal products provide a number of essential nutrients iron for the blood, amino-acids for body repair, potassium and the B vitamins. One can survive healthily on an extreme vegetarian diet, but it is a complex and contrived exercise dangerous if not carefully done. Meat provides health more easily: you could almost say more naturally."
Facts are often, however, a waste of time: Vege-warriors prefer slogans with which they bombard you while you are eating the dull food they impose on you. Sexual Politics of Meat, a new book by Carol Adams, explains how "being a vegetarian reverberates with feminist meaning". Meat eating is not only a "symbol of male power, it is an index of racism". It is also linked to war, whereas vegetarianism goes with lesbianism and teetotalism. There is no arguing with such people: it is best to run.
Both loony and faddish varieties of vegetarianism are the fruit of western societies which have the time and money to be wasteful and status-conscious about food, particularly Britain and the US which have no widespread tradition of taste in eating. Look at the great cuisines of France, China, Italy, then at the hotchpotch Ms Adams is so proud to record in her diary: "Dinner was marvellous Middle Eastern bread, tomato, avocado, sunflower butter on toast, bananas ... Returning here at 9.00 I read Kate Millet and didn't do my yoga."
