Why I just ate meat for the first time in 15 years (and why I'm still a vegetarian)

This month, because I'm a Good Person and wish to help humanity and the furtherance of medical research (and not at all for the money I'm being paid to do it) I've been taking part in a medical trial. Because everything has to be controlled we all have to eat the same meals - and we have to finish everything on our plates, even if it's so gross and overcooked it makes you want to cry and mash your face into a wall (it is all so gross and overcooked it makes you want to cry and mash your face into a wall). And they don't cater to vegetarians. As a result, I have just had my first non-vegetarian meal in 15 years. (Yes, everyone who's ever asked me if I'd eat meat if you paid me, yes I would - all my principles can be sold for the right price). And this was it:

I know, right? It's making you want to cry and mash your face into a wall. Trust me, it tasted every bit as bland as it looks. It was blander than Rachel Rice, winner of Big Brother series 9.

So, to compensate for my compromise of principles I've decided to use my latest blog post to do something I very rarely do, and get preachy about being veggie. Believe it or not, despite the content of this blog, I don't usually like to proselytise about my principles. You are all entitled to be wrong. And god knows you usually are. But you had a choice about whether to read this and for some reason, despite the existence of an entire internet full of porn, you've chosen this. So suck it up.

Probably the question I get asked most frequently in life, at least after "can I see some ID please?" and "so are you a good person to have on a pub quiz team then?" is "why are you vegetarian?" I've given many answers to this question over the years (though my most frequent is probably "because I hate animals"). However, what I have discovered over the 15 years I've been answering this question is that about 90% of the people who ask it are not remotely interested in hearing the answer. Instead, they are looking for a springboard to tell me why I am wrong. I know what you're thinking: I spend my entire blogging life talking about why people are wrong about things. But with this one (well actually with all things) in actual fact I am right and you are all wrong.

And here's why, in 11 simple words: it's mean to eat things that don't want to be eaten*!

Over recent years it's become increasingly fashionable to be vegetarian, even, to a point, vegan (though obviously vegans are still considered, by and large, mentally imbalanced pallid commie fruitcakes who probably can't even eat fruitcake). These days the arguments for vegetarianism tend to focus on the environmental impact: the relative efficiency of farming land for crops over animals, the methane output of cattle, the reduced carbon footprint of not shipping burger meat from South America. There are so many sophisticated arguments for going veggie that is has become a bit gauche to simply say "I don't want to kill animals unnecessarily". But, truth be told, that was the primary reason that, as a deeply uncool fifteen-year-old, I decided to try giving up meat for Lent to see if I could do it longer term. And why I’m still doing it as a deeply uncool 30-year-old.

The thing is, until the day when meat can be grown in a lab, animals have to die to make meat. (Yeeeeees, I would, and yeeeees, I would eat a burger if you said you would kill a cow if I didn't, and yeeeees, I would eat meat if I was stuck on a desert island with only meat trees). To produce the vast majority of it they have to live short, unpleasant lives in conditions you wouldn't wish on Jeremy Clarkson. And then they have to die like this: (please do watch that video, because if you can't stomach it you shouldn't be...well...stomaching it). Call me soft, but I don't really like the thought of animals suffering and dying to make my mealtimes slightly more pleasurable. It's really as simple as that.

Some people aren't so bothered - or are more bothered about other things. That's fair enough; we all draw our moral lines fairly arbitrarily. If any of us wanted to be truly altruistic in life we would spend our entire free time fighting global injustices and planning an elaborate assassination attempt on George Osborne, but we don't; we sit in our Primark underpants watching Grand Designs and reading Buzzfeed lists about 27 Things Only British People Will Understand on an iPad made by a 7-year-old Nepalese orphan.

If you find the thought of giving up meat utterly unbearable don't bother. There are other things you can do to help make the world a better place. Or you could maybe think about cutting down a bit. Do veggie Mondays. Do veggie weekdays. But whatever you do, please don't sidle up to me at a dinner party and ask casually "so, why are you vegetarian?" with a view to telling me why you aren't, and why I haven't really thought it through (I have thought it through: endelessly. Every time I smell a bacon sandwich I think it through). And please, god, don't give me the "it's not natural" argument.**

You aren't vegetarian, basically, because you like eating meat. You like the fact that it tastes delicious. And it does, I won't deny it. But so, my friends, does smug moral superiority. Oh yeeeeaaah. Come, join me on my high horse (you won't find him in your Findus lasagna). Have a carrot with me. Hell, have a veggie Percy Pig, it's the 21st Century. At least you know David Cameron hasn't had his cock in this one. And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some overcooked chicken skewers to eat.

* Except fish. Fish are ugly. 

** (For an excellently written account of why "it's not natural" is a nonsense argument for anything ever please read my blog on the matter)