Glad to be a veggie, and healthy too

SO IT'S official. A scientific study - conducted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in conjunction with Oxford University - has confirmed what millions of us have known instinctively for years: vegetarianism is good for you.

Science, under the leadership of Dr Margaret Thorogood, has carefully gathered evidence from observation of vegetarians and meat eaters over 12 years. It suggests that vegetarians live longer and are substantially less likely than their meat-eating counterparts to develop cancer or heart disease.

Perhaps now people might begin to take vegetarians seriously instead of sneering at us through the defensive veil of their own misconceptions. After all, we're a minority group - probably running to several millions, although there are no accurate figures - and it's politically correct to be nice to minorities. Unlike say, blacks or the disabled, we are of course a self-selecting group, but then so are non-smokers and they generally get more consideration than we do.

For example, if I mention vegetarianism, as I must when someone has invited me to eat, some self-appointed interrogator is quite likely to force me to justify my position. People who don't realise that we have heard it all before - again and again and again - think they are being cleverly original when, in an unpleasant, jocular way, they say: 'Ah, but I bet you wear leather shoes.' (I don't). Sometimes they're just silly: 'Well if we were all like you the country would be overrun by sheep, hee hee hee.'

All of this, in my view, is plain bad manners. Surely, few people would be ill-bred enough to challenge someone who had just declared themselves to be a Roman Catholic, Communist or Jew to explain their minority beliefs? So why do vegetarians have to put up with it?

Things are, of course, much easier for vegetarians now than they were 10 or 20 years ago. As numbers have grown, so the food industry has responded. However, many caterers and restaurateurs still seem to believe that vegetarians are simply cranky consumers of vegetables who aren't much interested in eating and that we're all on slimming diets. Consequently they offer 'vegetarian alternatives' which are tiny and insubstantial: say half a grapefruit when everyone else is on generous helpings of pate with buttered toast. Or they serve up wan bits of salad for a main course. They work on an apparent assumption that we are out to prove that man (or woman) can live by lettuce alone. While an exclusive diet of leaves is less than healthy, you can do very well on a mixture of grains, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruits, cheese and eggs, as I have proved for 17 years.

Then there are those who, unaccountably, assume that any vegetarian must also be a paid-up member of a temperance society. 'Oh, you do drink, then . . .' if one is seen with a glass of wine. It is said in tones that range from polite surprise, to relief, to disdainful accusation, to derision.

I remember accepting an invitation to lunch with a magazine editor. Since the meeting involved food I had to 'come out' in advance. My host was a conventional middle-aged man in a dark suit and his relief at my classic two- piece and matching earrings was palpable. 'You don't look like a vegetarian' he said as we went off to the restaurant. When I got to know him better he confessed that he had been expecting someone with Doc Martens, a fringed skirt and wild hair.

Vegetarianism is a life choice, not a political statement. It cuts across all age groups, social classes and extremes of the political spectrum. Can there be anything else that Paul McCartney and Alan Clark (although he's not strict), or Kate Bush and I, have in common? Most of us don't campaign or proselytise. We simply get on with it quietly.

And as for that all-too-predictable query about whether we're in it for health or ethics, non-vegetarians usually fail to appreciate that for most of us the two are inseparable. I began to cut down on meat 18 years ago, initially for health reasons. Once I had proved to myself that dead flesh - aquatic as well as terrestrial - is expendable, then the exploitation and cruelty involved in its production became, for me, morally insupportable and I quickly gave it up altogether.

Do I miss meat? No. Am I pleased that my chances of succumbing to cancer or heart disease are now proved to be substantially reduced by my vegetarianism? Yes, of course. It isn't so much that I'm much bothered about the date of the grim reaper's arrival but that I want the best possible quality of life in the meantime. I enjoy life because I feel positively well and attribute that largely to vegetarianism. However, on the do-as-you-would-be-done-by principle, I do not seek to judge or influence those who choose a different path.

Let us hope that last week's report will help people realise that vegetarians are only people of all shapes, sizes, colours and creeds, who have made a specific (and scientifically vindicated) choice. The present political and social climate claims to be supportive of personal choice. Remember that, the next time you feel like putting a vegetarian down because you find him (or her) a nuisance or an embarrassment.

(Photograph omitted)