Veganuary 2017 was always set to be bigger than Dry January 2017. Last year was the year of the sesh; it would be weird to just absolve ourselves of that for the sake of slightly improved liver function. Plus, not drinking is still boring and mocktails are still just £9 salty juices.Besides, being vegan is cool now. There are now more than half a million vegans in the UK. The word "vegan" was in the headlines constantly last year. It probably brought Metro most of its online traffic, the amount they were barking on about it. "Desperate" vegans queued hours for pizza! Veggan – like vegan, but eats eggs, get it? – was supposedly a food trend! Research found that vegans live longer than meat eaters, and that a third of people wouldn't date a vegan! And then that those new five pound notes weren't vegan, or even vegetarian! Did it even matter?!
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Naturally, the capitalist world accommodated this trend by making it better and easier to be a vegan. The big supermarkets started stocking more vegan products than ever before, and their own brands of vegetarian food widely made switches from being only veggie-friendly to being vegan-friendly. Ben & Jerry's unveiled their plans for dairy-free ice-cream. Quorn started doing vegan products. The culinary bastion for all that is Basic, Pret a Manger, made a Veggie Pret in central London that was so popular it was made permanent, and the brand is now reportedly looking to open or convert more stores. Zizzi got a vegan menu. Carluccio's got a vegan menu. Wetherspoons got a vegan menu.By the end of the year I was standing in a vegan Christmas market with queues so long it took near enough an hour to get served. Then came the news that we would be gifted the first vegan "fried chicken" shop in the world. Veganism had made it.
It makes sense that this is happening now. Netflix's 86 million subscribers were treated to various documentaries on veganism last year; you couldn't help but learn about its pros and perhaps a few of its cons. And importantly, in a year where it felt like nothing you did made a difference to the world, veganism was an easy way to make the personal political. Change didn't rely on a vote that got lost, or a tweet that got bombarded with negative comments, but something you could do alone three times a day and, after a year, would mean you'd saved 200 animals and that your carbon footprint would have been cut by about a half.
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The effect of all this meant that, last year, veganism lost its historical association with sitars and body odour and became a part of the wider health conscious, environmentally aware, 20-something identity. And now it's January, 2017 and Clapham Common tube station is completely filled with Peta posters telling you to go vegan, and fine eateries like All Bar One and Las Iguanas are putting on 2-4-1 deals and new vegan menus for you to try. So you too have decided to go vegan for the month. What a champ.Because you're going to need a lot of guidance through what's going to be a very strange and difficult 31 days, I (a vegan) am here to help. Here is what's going to happen to you in Veganuary:Meat and dairy have been clogging up your pipes for years and now you're putting nature's equivalent of Senokot through them. We're only four days in, but you'll have noticed already that, depending on the amount of fruit, vegetables and pulses you've been eating, you'll have been pooping approximately after every meal. Breakfast: poop. Maybe a lil one mid-morning after the coffee. Lunch: yes, another check-in at the nice private disabled toilet at work. And if you can make it home before the next one, good on you. If you make it to the end of the month, you'll have a newfound respect for the human body and its processing powers.And that's because your diet is now like 85 percent fibre. If you get a stomach ache or cramping, just chill out and don't bother WebMD-ing "I have cramps am I dying" or anything; it will pass. Your system will get very used to it quickly. (Also you're probably eating more beans and pulses, so there's that side effect to consider IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN).
YOU'LL SHIT A LOT
YOU MIGHT GET CRAMPS
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YOU WILL TRY TO EAT FAKE MEAT AND CHEESE BUT GET ANGRY QUICKLY BECAUSE AT THIS POINT IT TASTES EXACTLY LIKE PLASTIC
EGGS ARE IN EVERYTHING, WHICH AGAIN WILL ANGER YOU
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Even a lot of innocent-looking veggie stuff still contains egg as a binding agent – like most Quorn products. These things won't even just say "egg" either; they might say stuff containing the incredibly gross word "ova": ovalbumin, ovomucin, ovomucoid. And they contain dairy if it says whey, lactose or casein. Sorry, I know it's anal, but you have to do this if you want to really understand what it takes to be a #smoking #hot #vegan.
PEOPLE WILL SNEER AT YOY AND AT LEAST 20 WILL SAY, "HOW DO YOU KNOW SOMEONE'S VEGAN? DON'T WORRY, THEY'LL TELL YOU"
YOU WILL HAVE A FUN CONVERSATION WITH YOUR GRANDPARENTS, OR ANYONE OVER 60, FOR WHOM THE IDEA OF NOT EATING MEAT, DAIRY OR EGGS WITH EVERY MEAL IS INCONCEIVABLE
WHEN YOU'RE DRUNK OR HUNGOVER YOU WILL FAIL OR VERY NEARLY FAIL
YOU'LL HAVE TO EAT SIDES AT RESTAURANTS AND PRETEND YOU'RE HAPPY ABOUT IT
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