A tortured vegetarian

Josh Surtees

Two weeks into my latest venture into vegetarianism, a friend asked me to pick him up some dinner from Mr Chow’s Smoke House.

As I stood in line waiting to order I tried to distract myself from the excruciating fact that all around me were succulent pieces of meat being seasoned, smoked and devoured.

Despite having just eaten a large meal involving rice and chickpeas, my mouth began to water and my stomach felt empty.

This is my second year-long abstinence from meat. One year eating meat, one year not, on rotation. That’s the plan. It would be a reasonable arrangement if I wasn’t the most carnivorous man alive. But I am. Meat is more than food to me. It’s a soul-enriching indulgence, like a drug. Vegetarianism is a torturous test in self-discipline.

Arriving at my friend’s house with the ribs, the torment I’d endured was plain to see.

“It’s like taking a celibate to a whorehouse,” the rib-eater wryly observed.

I laughed, but inside I wanted to cry.

And let me confess something – the first time I tried to go veggie, I did cry. Literally burst into tears one evening and ordered a meat feast pizza. A vegetarian breakdown, I call it.

As I write this, to fend off depression, let me think back over some recent meaty memories that will see me through this hell.

I’ve eaten chicken hearts in Brazil (wonderful chewy texture, like escargots), a pig’s heart bought at a French supermarket for €1 (I overcooked it and struggled to bite through the toughened ventricle), lamb’s brains (served cold in Istanbul in olive oil, very delicate, melted in my mouth), gizzard (literally digestive tract) served on a skewer from a roadside vendor in Ghana, bone marrow (yummy roasted) extracted from a cow’s femur at St John offal restaurant in London, and chicken foot souse here in Trinidad (still can’t get over the rubbery, wrinkly claws).

Hell, I’ve even eaten a kid! Not a child, you ignoramuses, a baby goat. It was in Andalucía, southern Spain, and knowing the Spanish, it was probably two weeks old max. It’s in the top ten most delicious things I’ve ever eaten.

So why am I subjecting myself to this meatless life?

Mostly as a tribute to my mother. She was a lifelong vegetarian and I want to ensure that legacy endures, even in part, through me.

When she died, I stopped eating meat as a mark of respect for her, and her love of animals. I continued the self-imposed ban for over a year until I came back to Trinidad and broke the fast with a delicious chicken pelau.

That first test wasn’t hard. My grief spurred me on. Also, I ate fish – which is flesh and, therefore, somehow inherently satisfying.

Do I have any guilt about saying that? Not really.

Humans evolved eating animals. The argument made by some that we have now evolved beyond the need for animal products in our diets is scientifically questionable. There’s so much healthy nutrition our bodies get from meat and dairy that is hard to obtain elsewhere.

Rejecting animal products because you love animals or want to protect the environment is great – I support all vegan lifestyles – but to claim health benefits is stretching it.

I know that livestock is contributing to climate change and one day humans will be forced into stricter diets with rules governing what we farm and eat.

I’m getting my practice in now, in a psychological battle against my evolutionary instincts.

I’m a caveman. I look at a live pig and I salivate. An involuntary “mmmm…” escapes, as though I’m watching a rack of cartoon pork chops spit-roasting over a flame. I look at a pig and I see pork belly, tenderloin, sausages, crackling (that’s the fatty skin we eat in England after crisping it up in the oven with lots of salt).

On an episode of Bizarre Foods this week I watched a family in Madrid bleed a pig dry.

"You have to catch it all in the bucket before it coagulates, to make blood sausage," they said.

“Abso-frickin-lutely,” I muttered, nodding at the TV entranced.

Later, the presenter Andrew Zimmern ate lamb’s intestines, sautéed their brains and stripped a piglet’s head.

“It’s like I’m on the set of The Revenant,” he said, standing beside something recently killed, disembowelled and hung from a hook.

Inevitably, come questions of morality.

Only eat what you would kill yourself, they say. I could shoot a cow but could not wring a chicken’s neck. Where does that leave me?

Would you eat a horse? Of course not, I’m British!

A monkey? Only as the honorary guest of an Amazonian tribe.

Whale? Stop it.

Dog? Never!

And the question we’ve all been asked at least once, could you eat a person? After a year of vegetarianism? Sure! I’m only human.