Last May, after a weekend away together, I set up a WhatsApp group with my vegan sister-in-law and her partner (also vegan) entitled “Vegan curious …” because, well, I was. Curious, that is. The ethical and environmental benefits of a vegan or plant-based diet have become increasingly difficult to ignore, with research published last year showing such diets result in 75% less climate-heating emissions, water pollution and land use than diets containing more than 100g of meat a day. I am often the only meat-eater in the staff room at work and what was once a fringe issue now seems boringly ordinary. The case for change is clearcut.
That weekend, the couple (both fabulous cooks) had prepared a range of delectable vegan curries for the family, all of which were gobbled up in an instant. The food was delicious and the reasoning behind their dishes – that no animals were harmed in the making of them – was gentle but persuasive. In setting up the WhatsApp group, I wanted to gather a collection of tasty vegan recipes that I could cook regularly and easily for my family, in an attempt to make my move once and for all into a more sustainable, ethical way of eating. And then, I just … didn’t.
The weekly shop and meal prep is already a source of anxiety for me. Every Monday evening, when my partner and I put in the online order, we sit at the dining table and stare blankly at each other, saying: “Wait, what other dinners are there?” And then, exhausted from the pressures of work and parenting and general life, we opt for the same meals every week: chilli con carne, bolognese, sausages and mash, chicken bake, stir-fry. Click, click, click. Ordered. Bed. The idea that I should replace every item on my shopping list, every meal on my menu with a vegan alternative felt like an insurmountable challenge. It’s little wonder that, despite my best intentions, I opted out.
Inevitably, though, as January – and Veganuary – rolls around, I’ve started to think again about opting in. Only this time I want to make my change, my sustainable change, more sustainable. It’s for this reason that I’ve chosen to partake in what the poet, vlogger and presenter Leena Norms has rather charmingly called, on Instagram, Half-Arse Veganuary.
The notion is simple: rather than completely overhauling your lifestyle, just make small “half-arsed” attempts at changing it. Her suggestions range from eating vegan snacks to choosing vegan options when dining out. Participants of the challenge can also choose to just eat vegan breakfasts, vegan condiments, or, where brands offer a vegan alternative, to try that instead.
It’s a bit-by-bit method that could work for other sustainable changes – buying secondhand clothes, reducing plastic use, taking public transport – and the benefits are twofold. Firstly, every sustainable choice, however small, is better for the environment. If we all ate plant-based breakfasts, for example, but continued to consume animal products at lunch and dinner, we would still collectively move the environmental dial, however incrementally. Secondly – and I’d argue more significantly – I suspect that small but achievable changes are more likely to lead to a bigger, more enduring lifestyle choice.
It’s a theory supported by the behavioural scientist BJ Fogg, who founded the Behaviour Design Lab at Stanford University. Fogg posits that rather than breaking a habit, we should untangle it. Just as if we were unsnarling a set of Christmas lights, he argues, we can’t do it all at once. We start with the easiest tangle first, and we will get there in the end. Untangling a habit helps to reset our expectations about the process of change: that it is, in fact, a process. And it doesn’t happen overnight.
According to Fogg’s theory, then, by choosing an oat-milk latte when I go out for coffee later, I will be starting the process of untangling my relationship with animal products one small, manageable knot at a time. (As opposed to my blighted May attempt, which had me hurling the fairy lights back into the decorations bag in a huff.)
So that’s what I plan to do. And I invite you to consider it too if, like me, you are vegan-curious but also quite understandably overwhelmed by the prospect of unravelling a relationship with animal products that has become complex and knotted. I do wonder whether my half-arsed attempts will lead to – for want of a better word – a whole-arsed lifestyle change. But I’m not putting a time scale on that, and I certainly don’t expect to achieve it within a single month.
In the meantime, my sister-in-law has sent me the recipes for the vegan curries and I’m already browsing the menu of the cafe I’m visiting tomorrow morning. The vegan chestnut and cherry porridge sounds delicious and, potentially, life-changing.
Chloë Hamilton is a freelance journalist
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