I think this is the first mainstream newspaper editorial I have seen advocating for veganism. With puns!
Vegans are often unreasonably mocked as do-gooders and sniped at for making dinner parties awkward for those who don’t like lentils quite so much. This is unfair: the diet does do the world good and if vegans provoke their friends into going vegan too, so much the better.
There is now a great deal of convincing data that breeding animals for food dirties the air and chews up the earth. One recent peer-reviewed study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine calculates that should the world go vegan, annual greenhouse gas emissions would halve and the new land used every year for each person would near-halve. The diet is also healthier: some meat products have been linked to cancer and saturated fat from meat and dairy products can cause heart disease. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA predicts that global veganism would lead to 8.1 million fewer deaths per year.
Vegans should be encouraged: their choice is high in moral as well as digestive fibre. Their detractors should stop crying over spelt milk.
Okay, it is the Guardian newspaper, so very far to the progressive end of the mainstream. But still, on the edge of the mainstream. I am noting this as a milestone.
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