Growing up with two plant-based sisters meant I was always v-curious. Keen to eat my own food, I’d gobble it down and then turn my eager eyes and developing taste buds to everything they were eating. But this was the 1980s, an era of adding water to mysterious sawdust-like packages of food claiming to be sausages, burgers and nut loaves, with lacklustre and oten disappointing results. Frankly, these young mouthfuls of ready-made or ‘instant’ veggie meat replacements put me of these types of products for life.
I grew up in a small village, where someone once tried garlic and was shunned by the parish for a week or more. There were no takeaways, not much frozen food, and tofu might has well have been moon cheese. How things have changed. Now, even my local corner shop sells vegan burgers, cheeses, plant milks and more vegetables than my father ever knew existed.