If I told you I was a flexitarian would you cringe? Throw a pie at my head? Dismiss me as an indecisive fence-sitter? If, like me, you’re a food lover who isn’t ‘into’ labels, it’s hard to know what to call yourself. I tend to go with ‘mostly vegetarian’, or perhaps a half-baked vegan. I’m big on nut butters, I tinker with tofu and tempeh, I rarely cook or eat meat at home… but I still flirt with a carbonara on a regular basis because I haven’t made my status official. I’m just trying to consume fewer animal products and put plants at the centre of my diet instead. Meat and me: it’s complicated.
I’m not the only one. While the modern food scene can feel like a battlefield, with lines drawn between extreme clean eaters and butter-soaked nose-to-tail types, there’s another group trying to reclaim the middle ground. Only 2-3 per cent of the UK is currently vegetarian or vegan (news that might surprise anyone who’s ever found themselves in a queue for jackfruit tacos), but more than a third of people now identify as ‘semi-vegetarian’, according to a 2015 Mintel report.