Just as people saying something along the lines of that Adolf Hitler,* was a great guy is a red flag to many of us, so in all spheres there will be words or phrases which immediately put us on alert. Obviously these can vary from person to person, though hopefully most will be wary of admirers of genocidal dictators or narcissistic leaders. In my lifetime, vegetarianism has gone from something slightly fringe, at times hip, to mainstream. The sudden, or so it seemed to me but perhaps I was just looking the other way, interest and adoption of veganism was much more in your face.

I think I’ve written about my accidental conversion from vegetarian to vegan before, so for those of you who know, please skip the next, rather long, paragraph. I’ll get back to red flags later.

My mother encouraged me to follow a vegetarian diet when I was twelve. After years of trying to get me to like meat, she recognised it was unlikely to happen and it would be better to get into good vegetarian food and habits early on. In a shop in Guildford one day (Cranks on the corner of Chapel Street and Castle Street for those of you who know it, and for the local history buffs in the building previously occupied by Mills the Printers) I came across a leaflet about factory farming and the dial turned a few notches, making me aware of hideous practices in our food industries, and making efforts to avoid them. But I was always one of those vegetarians who say they can’t possibly be vegan because they like cheese too much. Milk I was happy to pass on, it was my birthday treat when I was small not to have to drink any. I’d still eat eggs from hens kept as pets in good surroundings, who live out their whole lives and don’t end up as the Sunday roast, if only I could get them. So I rather closed my eyes and ears to the suffering of animals in the dairy industry and munched on. The only problem was, much as I like cheese, cheese was not completely sure about me. When I ate it my nose would first run, then become blocked. Still my partiality ,want I would put up with these inconveniences. Then, one Christmas around nine years ago, after gorging myself on Blue Stilton, Camembert, Wensleydale, you name it, I realised I had gone too far. My whole head felt blocked, and not just my head, my whole body felt uncomfortable and sluggish. So I resolved to give up cheese, yoghurt, and any bits of dairy still in my diet for a month. A detox essentially. After two weeks the truth was unavoidable. I felt so much better without dairy. And that, dear reader, is how I became first an ovo-lacto vegetarian, then a vegan. I never liked meat.

However, my conversion coincided with the booming interest in veganism and new vegan products. Many of these aped the things those who felt they should be vegan, whether for ethical or other reasons, missed from their meat eating days. You won’t even miss meat!ore seemed to be their main promise. But how about those of us who didn’t miss meat in the first place, who were only too happy not to be obliged to gulp down an unwelcome mouthful of some dead animal? Suddenly we had to navigate a world where meat substitutes might be served to us as the vegan/vegetarian option without consultation. Nightmare. I almost yearned for the days when, still a vegetarian, my only choice was unfailingly vegetarian lasagne.