I was out recently in a pub (with a fiveyear- old — this really should have been the headline). A fellow vegan noticed that there was now a guide on the drinks menu, indicating which wines were vegan. She muttered, “Oh God, here’s where I discover the wine I’ve been drinking all this time isn’t vegan.”
It’s tricky. People are, nowadays, marvellously sensitive to vegans (on the whole), particularly if booking group meals in restaurants, or weddings, they always think about the food, but, rarely the drink. The general population is kept, I think, in a state of ignorance about food production. There’s a degree of complicity on their behalf, too, particularly when it comes to meat — they really don’t want to know. But I am often staggered by how little people know about what they eat, where it comes from, or what’s in it.