The truth about plant-based food

There's an air of familiarity about the former head chef of Claridge's penchant for plant-based food. It was reported this weekend that he has left his role after the hotel passed on his plans for an entirely plant-based menu. All credit to Claridge's who are one of the few institutions not to have swallowed this particular culinary cool aid. And yet these sorts of gastro-themed spats are becoming all too common. The all-or-nothing attitude of many plant-based devotees has made dining out an increasingly divisive experience.

Remember when the 'vegetarian option' meant making do with a cheese omelette and ethical eating involved skipping the prawn cocktail starter and going straight for the steak and chips? Order steak in a restaurant today and you risk a barrage of disapproving comments from fellow diners. 'I hope that meat was sourced locally,' they'll mutter between mouthfuls of Mexican chia seeds.

I'm all for high quality grub and kinder husbandry but do we really have to make even our eating habits into a culture war? In 2021, dietary requirements are bandied about with as much vehemence as preferred pronouns. Saying you are on a 'plant-based' or 'plant-forward' diet may place you at the top of the ethical pecking order but it also distances you from your fellow diners. Confess that you prefer pecking at pork sausages and you risk being labelled a nature-baiting, climate denier on the fast track to an early grave. What happened to the old fashioned bonhomie of sharing a meal together?

Make no mistake; the sort of food we consume has become yet another signifier of our political and cultural leanings. We must be seen to be eating the 'correct' food or risk censure.

But as with so many decisions based on outward displays of virtue, there are unintended consequences that often cancel out the glow of self-righteousness that comes from believing you are 'on the right side of history.'

There's a widely held assumption, for instance, that plant-based food is naturally healthier and more environmentally sound than other categories of foodstuff but, as eco-farmer and author of forthcoming book For a Love of the Land Sarah Langford told me, 'a highly-processed fake-meat burger made using imported soya, stuffed with artificial flavouring and vegetables grown in chemically treated soil is not only nutritionally rubbish, but environmentally rubbish too. If people buy a fake-meat burger rather than a pasture fed steak from down the road thinking that they’re doing a good thing for the environment and their bodies then they’re being sold a lie.' 

Fashionable terms such as 'ethical' and 'sustainable' are used to bolster the appeal of dishes without much thought as to whether the ingredients on the plate warrant their flashy labels. As long as the food looks and sounds good on social media, who cares?

Chefs are having to come up with ever more exotic ways to impress the fickle foodies who treat ethical eating as another arm of progressivism; woe betide the heretical chef who fails to display the name of his 'small yield' farmer. Menus are treated like holy writs, pored over by the censorious of palate.

In our rush to fetishise food it's easy to forget that the stuff we put in our mouths is merely fuel. The truth is that the best meals are rarely about the food and always about the company. What chance do we have of enjoying good company when we're so obsessed with the morality of what is on our plate? By all means call out all those giant industrial land abusers who think they can get away with selling us junk but please, let's keep politics away from the dinner table.