If Food is the New Religion I'm an Atheist

If Food is the New Religion… I’m an Atheist.

Gavin Wren Food Opinion Pieces, Writing

Religion, historically, was the saviour from a life of eternal pain. Today, food brings the same utopian promises of paradise on earth, a life free of disease, the ability to alleviate the suffering of the environment and the animals within it. Whichever devotional path to dietary enlightenment that you choose, bear one thing in mind; like every religion on earth, there are always extremeists waiting around the corner, ready to spoil it for the rest of us.

2017 wasn’t kind to clean eating, the diet beloved of bloggers and Instagram influencers, who revelled in it’s snap-happy aesthetic and took delight in revealing the latest South American plant extract which purported to cure anxiety, or even cancer.

The spurious health claims that abounded were roundly dismessed by a tranche of media criticism, starting with Ruby Tandoh exposing its toxicity January, a follow-up to her tirade against clean eating on…

How I Decided Whether to Eat Meat Part 6: Eat Whatever the Hell You Want

Gavin Wren Food Opinion Pieces, Writing

The majority of the UK population don’t care where their meat comes from, as long as it’s cheap. The average UK shopper buys food based on price, not quality. Many of you probably understand the issues around meat, therefore I’m preaching to the converted and these very words are lost in the foodie bubble of “we need to do this” and “we must to do that”. Blah blah, bloody blah.

Is my exploration of meat, of being an ‘ethical carnivore’ little more than a bourgeouis hobbyist interest for the middle classes?

Louise Gray’s book of the same name took a far greater leap into this world than I have been able to, a fascinating and beautifully written journey, yet, as with my own investigations, it leaves me wondering on a larger scale, how does any of this change the society we live in?

It adds to the conversation of woke…

How I Decided Whether to Eat Meat Part 5: Rural Meat vs Urban Vegan

Gavin Wren Food Opinion Pieces, Writing

Back in the kitchen, Tomáš was preparing the head, deciding to split it, to rescue the tongue intact. Gruesomely, we used a wood saw to cut through the skull and separate Theresa’s head into two halves. This sounds disturbing, however, like many seemingly gruesome events in life, the reality is far easier to handle than the anticipation of it.

For example, would you enjoy watching a video of a human having surgery? Unlikely, I guess. Would you appreciate having surgery performed upon you to resolve an illness? Most probably. Would you watch videos of animals being killed? Unlikely as well.

Certain activities are not performed for any kind of voyeuristic performance, but for the health of humankind and I’d suggest that the butchering of animals is one of those things. Just like surgery or slaughter, this is not a spectator sport.

Watching a YouTube video on butchery techniques in preparation…

whether to eat meat reactionary veganism

How I Decided Whether to Eat Meat – Part 4: Reactionary Veganism

Gavin Wren Food Opinion Pieces, Writing

For the next two weeks I sat in a purgatorial existance, flip-flopping between reactive veganism (I stopped buying yoghurt and cheese) and seeking out a chance to hand-slaughter an animal. Steak tartare vs David’s ram. Bernard vs Theresa.

Theresa’s family tree would face an uncertain future if the world were to go vegan, many breeds have little use outside of being raised, killed, cooked and eaten. They’re certainly not the same as the native wild boars that wreaked havoc across agricultural land in England during medieval times, tearing up crops and occasionally attacking sheep. Such a menace, they were subsequently hunted to extinction along with wolves, lynxes and beavers, because not only were they a threat to agriculture, they also made good sport and fine eating.

Theresa and her sisters were born and raised exclusively to be eaten, so the path of their demise was an inevitability which…

Tamworth black pig

How I Decided Whether to Eat Meat – Part 1: Spiking Vegetarians

Gavin Wren Food Opinion Pieces, Writing

Meat has received a lot of criticism recently, yet, in itself, it’s done nothing wrong. What has served up a big heap of wrong is society’s relationship with meat and the food industry’s pursuit of it, on a global level.

This is the first of a six-part story of meat and how I decided whether to continue eating it.

Spiking Vegetarians

My childhood diet was firmly in the meat ’n’ two veg category. Cooking was the sole responsibility of my mother, who, despite adventurous tendencies, relied on the formulaic meat plus carbs and veg principle. Grilled chicken breasts, sausages, a piece of fish or pork chops, surrounded by vegetables and spuds, or a good smattering of spag bol made with beef mince and slippery pasta.
Birthdays gave the birthdee free-reign over dinner, choosing whatever delicious morsels their stomach craved and my favourite treat was a meat fondue. A…

A healthy chickpea salad dressed with sweet white balsamic and smoked paprika, diced avocado and aromatic coriander is a beautiful lunchtime treat that's bursting with mexican and middle eastern flavours. It's vegetarian and vegan to boot, a meatfree treat to have for lunch or dinner and tastes even better if you make it in advance!

Smoked Paprika Avocado Salad

Gavin Wren Recipes, Vegan, Vegetarian

Most of the writing on my blog is not about food, but life in general and how I cope with it or not, in some cases. On occasion I veer onto a food-related social or political bent, but it’s rare for me to write lovingly about the flavours and story behind a recipe. Today, I’ve been staring at my screen for 53 minutes and have only written the preceding sentence. The first 51 minutes and 13 seconds were spent typing then deleting, typing then deleting as I attempted to coax a story about smoked paprika onto the page.

Constructive Procrastination.

I also checked out the bulk price of Kalamata olives (c.£20 for 2kg on eBay, £16 on Amazon fresh) and appraised which size Really Useful Boxes I need for my cupboards (none, they’re not quite the right size), to round up the disparate bags of half… come and read more…