Vegetarian goes mainstream
There's a new Coles Magazine out and it features two sections that are purely vegetarian - no three if you count the feature on pumpkin (which is not completely vegetarian I have to admit), plus vegetarian dishes here and there throughout.
Not to mention the little captions scattered here and there telling you how you can convert a meat dish to a vegetarian one. There are not quite as many vegan options but there are certainly a few.
Now I don't know if this is just a feature of this particular issue or whether it is an ongoing trend. I suspect the latter, because nothing was made of it in the brief Editor's note at the beginning of the magazine. I think it is just a recognition of the growing market for vegetarian food. And I have to say that in this particular issue the most tempting looking dishes were vegetarian. Here are two of them:
Another kind of stuffed zucchini on the left and cauliflower steak on the right. If you want to try any of these just pick up the magazine at your local Coles or go to the website and read it online.
But Coles Magazine is not the only place that is emphasising vegetarian food. I am highlighting it here because I see this particular magazine as being a barometer of what is going on in the food world. Indeed the supermarkets are a barometer to food and health trends in themselves of course. This is what I find so fascinating about them. What supermarkets do is respond to customer's needs. They are in it for profits. They are not the trendsetters in themselves. They simply enhance the trend I guess. And so you have enormous long aisles of health foods, and yoghurts, lots of dips and snack food for your kids lunchboxes, prepared meals for busy mums and on and on it goes. I guess the real trend-setters are a combination of celebrity chefs and their television programs and books, programs like Masterchef, bloggers and cookbook writers like Hemsley and Hemsley and trendy restaurants and cafés. Plus animal rights activists, vegan activists, climate change activists - indeed activists and interested journalists of all kinds. And into this world come the supermarkets and the niche shops which cater to particular trends.
And vegetarianism is definitely a trend. Even we are gradually moving that way. Last week we had two purely vegetarian meals and another one that just had a little bit of ham and bacon in it. The world it seems is moving that way - even a meat loving nation such as Australia.
Why now? Well these days we are more conscious of how the meat gets to our plate - the conditions in which the animals are kept being the main thing. Hence the growth in organic and free range which the supermarkets have already pounced upon. Have you noticed how small the proportion of cage-laid eggs is now in comparison to the free-range ones? Though mind you I read recently that chickens don't actually like to be outside - they'd rather be inside out of the way of the birds of prey! So actually barn laid is best.
Then there is also our modern awareness of the damage that large herds of animals do to the land. Hooved animals like cattle and sheep destroy the land they walk upon and also demand large quantities of food themselves. I can't remember the figures now but the amount of food required to feed one cow until slaughter time, is probably a whole lot more than required to feed one person with vegetables.
And then there's just the philosophical dilemma of killing dumb animals to feed ourselves, no matter how 'humanely' they are killed.
Another more positive factor is the availability of so many interesting and varied vegetables. When I was a child there was not much beyond potatoes, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, and various root vegetables. There were definitely no asian greens or eggplants or zucchini. It was a bit like Italy before tomatoes. And coupled with the modern availability of all these wonderful vegetables we have at our disposal today, is the proliferation of ways to find out what to do with them - television cooks and chefs, magazines, cookbooks and cooking competitions and the supermarkets themselves with their free magazines - obviously mainly an advertising/marketing venture - and their on trend range of goods.
I suspect it will be a long time before we completely give up meat - the older generations anyway - though maybe not the young - but I'm sure there are more and more people who are having at least one meat free meal per week. I confess I would find it difficult to go completely vegetarian. I often find myself adding a tiny bit of meat such as bacon to something that was supposed to be vegetarian, but it's interesting to go vegetarian now and then - particularly when you see tempting dishes like the ones in the current Coles Magazine. Must check out the Woolworths magazine too to see how many vegetarian recipes they have.
Vegan though - a step too far for me.
