Millennials aren’t the animal rights warriors they claim to be – half of vegetarians eat meat

According to a Waitrose survey, some are veggies only on weekdays; some only when they’re sober and some choose to support the slaughter of sentient beings ‘on special occasions’, a sort of modern version of the pagan practice of killing a goat on the winter solstice

The survey also found that 60 per cent of vegans and 40 per cent of vegetarians had adopted the lifestyle in just the last five years, as it has become increasingly trendy (AFP/Getty)

Waitrose – with, I think you’ll agree, exquisite timing – has published a survey all about vegans and vegetarians. It suggests that more than half of those describing themselves as “vegetarian or vegan” do sometimes eat meat.

That doesn’t make me want to kill them, obviously, still less grind their bones, turn them into kebabs and feed them to other vegans/vegetarians with a weakness for an occasional tasty meat snack, Titus Andronicus-style. It does, though, confirm a suspicion I’ve long harboured that an awful lot of this fad is about fashion and virtue signalling.

You see, there is no such thing as a secret vegan. Within minutes of being introduced they’ll have found some away of letting you understand the purity of their way of life. A conversation about, say, Donald Trump’s attitude to migration will have some remark about him eating burgers thrown in, with the rider that “of course” it’s always wrong to eat other living things.

The tea round is another ideal opportunity to say “no milk – I’m vegan”, in case you’d forgotten. A night out in the curry house with a veggie/vegan is like being invited to a scientologists’ convention, such is the force of the determined preaching to the unconverted about the inherent evils of eggs. If you’re really unlucky, your co-diner will also have developed a recent allergy to lactose and have declared themselves gluten intolerant. Which just leaves the chopped cucumber and onion garnish as the only edible thing on the menu. Maybe some of us are feeling a bit vegan-intolerant.

Dig into the detail of the Waitrose survey and you discover how pragmatic vegans and vegetarians can be (and I tend to use the terms interchangeably as it is basically the same thing). Some are veggies only on weekdays; some only when they’re sober; some choose to support the slaughter of sentient beings “on special occasions”, a sort of modern version of the pagan practice of killing a goat on the winter solstice. Imagine, then, if you were to declare yourself a devout Christian, but every second weekend you go out and merrily try to break every one of the Ten Commandments because we all have to have a break, don’t we?

Deep down, I know that eating meat is murder. Not very deep down I know that I couldn’t give up meat if I tried, because I enjoy it too much. Imagine a world without pork scratchings. There is no way I could live without scrambled eggs or milk in my tea or cakes, and the various veganised alternatives I’ve tried are just not quite right. They taste like there’s something missing, presumably because there is something missing. I’m not surprised that there are so many lapsarian vegans out there.

The Waitrose survey also found that 60 per cent of vegans and 40 per cent of vegetarians had adopted the lifestyle in just the last five years, as it has become increasingly trendy. Yet only 2 per cent admit they became vegan/veggie because it is fashionable (most do so on animal welfare grounds). So there may be some cognitive dissonance going on there, too, like men with beards thinking that they’ve always had one or decided to grow one before nearly every other bloke did. I suppose a bearded vegan millennial Corbynista is the ultimate symbol of Young Britain in 2018. God help us.

I know eating a Big Mac is morally questionable on all sorts of grounds, but I go ahead all the same. It is a little comforting to know that I’m not the only weak-willed hypocrite out there.