The V Word

On Weirdos, Plant Based Diets, Outrage & Influence

Dec 14, 2024

"It was easier to come out as a lesbian than it was to come out as a vegetarian." KD Lang

Being vegetarian has always felt synonomous with being a weirdo - a statement I feel entitled to make as I have been a vegetarian weirdo, or both vegetarian and weirdo, depending on how you look at it, for as long as I can remember.

But though taking ownership of a hurtful insult - such as weirdo - and wearing it as a banner of pride, is a tried and true remedy and one I have always embraced, the feeling of being not normal remains slightly triggering, as evidenced by the hot tears I felt prickling my eyes recently as my husband pointed out to me what ‘normal people’ set their ovens to, rather than just turning the dial up to ten or as far it goes like I usually do. In our household, this is referred to a putting the oven on ‘Carmo’. As in, when discovering a blackened meal in the oven, one member of my family might ask the other, ‘Was the oven on Carmo?’. But I digress, let’s get back to the meat of this missive.

Apparently as a little kid I asked my mother if I could please stop eating meat, telling her I didn’t like it, especially the texture - it was too chewy, and felt too much like eating flesh. Funny that. Also I felt sorry for the animals, though I hadn’t really put two and two together and thought about that part too much.

She said I didn’t have to eat it, it was fine, and that was that. It was never a big deal.

The interesting thing to me now, is that my mother was also a vegetarian, having expressed the exact same sentiment to her parents as a kid in the 1950s, when the whole concept of vegetarianism, especially for a child, would have been completely outrageous, but I hadn’t ever noticed. It was just who she was and she didn’t make a fuss about it. And of course kids don’t take much notice of what their parents are eating.

Around the same time, I begged our apple-pie American neighbours to take me fishing with them next time they went - an activity so far removed from the world my rock’n’roll family lived in that it sounded fabulously exotic and exciting, like something straight out of an old movie or one of the books I’d get lost in. I planned my fishing outfit and couldn’t wait to set off early in the morning with them (our family didn’t do anything early in the morning!).

Presumably what I thought fishing looked like

I loved being on the river, the lazy vibes, the willow trees … however as soon as the first fish took the bait and I witnessed the violent reality of the thrashing desperate creature in the bottom of our row boat, I completely lost it, sobbing and insisting they throw it back in the river and take me home. I knew I had ruined their day but I didn’t care - I cared more about the fish. I couldn’t cope with the reality of fishing, and I don’t think they could cope with me much after that - I became the weirdo next door rather than their sweet but eccentric little neighbour.

So I spent my childhood being the difficult, weird friend that nobody knew what to feed when I went for sleepovers, despite my reassurances that whatever they were having on the side would be fine for my dinner. Especially if it was potatoes. I hated feeling the stress it would cause a family, worrying about what on earth this strange kid would eat.

Years later, working in a bar/restaurant where a large part of my job was endlessing visiting the cool room to restock the fridges, I again lost my cool and had to quit my job as I couldn’t deal with the distressing screeching and scratching of the multitude of lobsters kept in polystyrene boxes in there. The cruelty of their hopeless existence haunted me until it became completely untenable to me, although it didn’t even slightly bother anybody else.

I always felt like the odd man out, the annoying one that sometimes couldn’t find a single vegetarian dish on the restaurant menu and spoiled outings and culinary experiences for the ‘normal’ meat eating people I was with by making it awkward.

In 1989, Linda McCartney said to chat show host Terry Wogan ‘Everybody thinks of vegetarians as cranks’.

“I do, yeah” he agreed, as the audience laughed, all in on the joke.

Maybe that’s part of the reason I’ve always enjoyed discovering that an artist I like is vegetarian - I feel less alone, and more like I’m in a discerning club of weirdos.

Paul and Linda McCartney tell the story that they were sitting at their dining table at the farm where they were living, eating lamb chops with the family, looking out the window at the cute little lambs gambolling past. They looked at their plates, then at each other and both decided then and there to become vegetarian. They never looked back.

The entire family has been hugely influential in terms of normalising vegetarian culture. Linda of course is known for her internationally successful meat free frozen foods range of burger patties, sausages and other meat substitutes and after her death, Paul and their daughters Mary and Stella launched the ‘Meat Free Mondays’ campaign in 2009, a movement which still endures today. Paul also narrated the impactful 2011 documentary ‘Glass Walls’, which revealed the horrifying realities of meat production, asserting “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we’d all be vegetarian”.

Linda and husband Paul eat a veggie burger at the launch of Linda McCartney Foods

In 1992, trailblazing Canadian artist k.d. Lang - of whom Tony Bennett once said, “When she sings, I can actually see angels’ - caused an uproar when she became the face of a PETA (People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals) ad where she stated “We all love animals, but why do we call some pets and some dinner?”.

Coming from cattle country heartland of of Consort, Alberta, this act led to outraged responses from local beef farmers and their supporters.

The ‘Home of KD Lang’ sign in her hometown was defaced then burned to the ground, her records were banned and boycotted on radio stations - and a prominent broadcaster called her out for being ‘unladylike’ - there were bomb threats to her record company, threats of tractor blockades to her concerts resulting in forced cancellations, and her mother suffered constant harassment. Reflecting on the furor in recent times, kd described the backlash as ‘really ugly’ telling 60 Minutes it had a huge impact on her career.

She has stated ‘I’m a veggie burger in a McDonald’s world’ - a declaration that really resonates with me - and noted “food and sexuality are so complex”. She says that she didn’t deliberately set out to be provocative, just educational, and that her choice to be vegetarian was a ‘compassionate spiritual issue for me’.

kd’s cooking segment below with Roseanne (back when she was subversive and funny rather than just hateful) where she makes a bunch of delicious vegetarian food and describes herself as ‘a tyrant in the kitchen’, is hilarious, educational and provocative! How I love kd.

Country superstar Carrie Underwood also hails from beef country and grew up on a Oklahoma cattle farm, choosing to become vegetarian at 13 years old after making the connection between what was on her plate and the cute little calves she’d help bottle-feed, famously stated she’d rather sing to cows than eat them and wearing a "V Is for Vegetarian" T-shirt on American Idol - probably the most controversial thing she has ever done. She advocates for vegetarianism and shares healthy diet and nutrition tips.

Carrie’s husband, NHL player Mike Fisher, although an avid meat eater and hunter, knows the way to her heart and once gave her the only thing on her Christmas list - two cows, which became beloved family members.

In 2008, Jessica Simpson - who pondered long ago on her reality television series if tuna was actually ‘chicken of the sea’ and has never lived it down - was photographed wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan ‘Real Girls Eat Meat’ - a braggadocious act she told OK Magazine was a dig at Carrie Underwood, who was the ex-girlfriend of Jessica’s then boyfriend Tony Romo.

Pamela Anderson, a long time vegetarian and PETA spokesperson, was dragged into the conversation on Australia’s Kyle and Jackie O show, where she joked around with the hosts calling Simpson ‘b*tch’ and ‘wh*re’ in response to the t-shirt shade - and then later revealed she sent Simpson informational material from PETA explaining the downsides of meat. Now, 16 years later, Simpson swears by a vegetarian diet.

Shania Twain is another long term dedicated vegetarian, explaining that as a performer she is ‘an athlete’ and has to support her energy and health. She prefers to ‘drink her food’ in smoothies on show days but tucks into champagne and a big bowl of vegetarian pasta post show.

Shania eating post show vegetarian pasta

Joan Jett, who has described herself as being ‘a major carnivore’ in her early years - ‘Burgers, steaks, the rarer the better; I got barbaric pleasure from eating meat that was bleeding’ - also told the Guardian in 2010 ‘Twenty years ago I thought: What’s the difference between eating a bloody steak and killing my dog, slitting him open and roasting him? I’ve always loved animals but it was around the late 80s that I realized I had to go vegetarian. A lot of things converged in my life then—musically, emotionally—but mainly it was my love of animals and spending so much time touring that made me decide I had to change my diet.’ Jett has been known to hand out Vegetarian Starter Kits on the streets and has a long history of collaborating with PETA.

The Smiths 1985 ‘Meat Is Murder’ #1 album and Morrissey’s vigilante anti-meat views were massively influential in spreading the animal rights message. Band members were forbidden from being photographed eating meat. Tour venues can’t serve meat on the nights he performs and he would screen a video about factory farmed hens before his shows. Morrissey told the Vegetarian Times in 1985 that he received letters from fans every day saying that they had stopped eating meat after hearing the album or reading an interview. His views also outraged some members of the public - at a concert in Stokes an audience member threw a bunch of sausages on stage. Morrissey said iIt hit me in the face and part of it got into my mouth…I had to just run off the stage and heave…eating meat is the most disgusting thing I can think of, its like biting into your grandmother’.

Wu Tang’s RZA became vegan in 1996 after a personal moment of reckoning, explaining “I could knock back about 30 chicken wings. On the 29th chicken wing, my teeth hit the bone. My mind said: dead bird …. you in New York City with all these pigeons flying around, and here you are, supposed to be an intelligent human being and you eating on a dead bird.’ I was like, that sounds pretty stupid to me. I never ate it again.” 80% of the Wu Tang Clan members are vegan and have raised their children meat free.

RZA told Bon Appetit in 2021: ‘A few bits of wisdom: A man is known to be strong, as they say, and that man eats steak for strength. Steak comes from a cow and the male cow, a bull, is a very strong animal that can grow up to around 1,500 pounds and move tons. All the cow eats is grass. All the muscles he has, all the steak, every part of him that we're consuming, is all built from plants. This is the animal we are consuming for strength, but what does that animal consume for strength? Plants.’

The genius Prince, noted super weirdo and PETA’s 2006 Annual World’s Sexiest Vegetarian, renounced meat in the late 90s. The Paisley Park estate still only serves vegetarian food to guests and staff, still prepared by Prince’s personal chef. Even when Prince was alive and working with high profile artists in his studio, if they wanted a hamburger for lunch, they would have to leave Paisley Park to eat it.

“2 my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being” Prince

Chrissie Hynde, force of nature and singer of The Pretenders, has been an animal activist and vegetarian for over 50 years now and even had her own popular vegan restaurant Vegiterranean, in her hometown of Akron Ohio in the early/mid 2000s - before the whole ‘plant based’ thing had really taken off.

Of course celebrity plant eaters/advocates/vegan restaurants are everywhere now. Electronic artist Moby opened the super hip vegan restaurant Little Pine in Los Angeles (it closed down during Covid). RZA promotes Plant Grants that offer $20k to black owned restaurant to turn vegan. Billie Eilish’s mother created Support & Feed to provide plant-based meals to unhoused youth and Billie was named PETA’s Person of the Year’ in 2021, for seizing every opportunity possible to educate and promote vegan food and fashion. Travis Barker, Blink 182 drummer, is an investor in hugely successful LA vegan restaurant Crossroads - and has his own range of CBD wellness products. Barker, a vegetarian since his teen years, turned vegan in 2009 after surviving a plane crash that killed the pilot, his assistant and his security guard, in order to improve his health and speed up his recovery. He claims he now never gets tired, despite endless late nights working in the studio or on the road and hardcore 90 minute workouts every day.

Continuing the theme of celebrating musical genius-weirdo-vegetarians, I can’t resist sharing these pointless but fascinating reflections the internet gave me from Lou Reed’s server from Candle 79, a vegan restaurant he often frequented:

On Halloween in 2009 I was working at Candle, and Lou came in pretty late, around 9:30. I ordered him the appetizer (flax chips on the side!) and juice he got every time as he walked in the door, and then walked him and the rest of his party up to a booth in the corner where he wouldn't be gawked at too much. As we were on our way up my boss, Benay, asked “so what did you do today, Lou?” He turned around on the stairs, and looked right at me and said, straight faced as usual, “I was at the Halloween parade”.
Lou ended up being the last customer I had at Candle 79–I found his order jotted down on a piece of scrap paper in my pocket a few weeks later–and during that meal something subtly funny happened, I don't remember what, but he made a (purposely) ridiculous face at me. Lou Reed's (mostly deserved) reputation as a curmudgeon still made him pulling a silly face at his hostess unexpected, but my interactions with him made me think that mostly he had lived hard for a lot of years, and was just enjoying living in the slow lane and reveling in quietude whenever possible.

It’s taken a long time for those who renounce meat to find their moment in the sun.

The Vegetarians' Home and Teetotaller Café opened in Zurich in 1898, attracting a largely female clientele of religious oddballs and those in poor heath along with artists and writers. In 1903 it became Hitl, a Swiss institution now recognised as the world’s first vegetarian restaurant, the brainchild of a Bavarian cobbler with rheumatoid arthritis who had adopted the diet on the advice of his doctor to help with his pain.

The establishment became fashionable over time and is now one of Switzerland's largest restaurants, seating 500 diners and offering a cocktail lounge, cooking classes, and a pumping nightclub over its three floors.

The head of Hiltl guest relations, Peter Vauthier, recounts that vegetarianism was then a kind of a badge of shame - ‘If you didn't eat meat, it meant you had no money’ - and most diners entered through a back door.

In 1939, the Nobel prize winning playwright (and political extremist/crank) George Bernard Shaw, self described as ‘the world’s most famous vegetarian’, at age 82 told the Australian press that the writings of the progressive Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley were the catalyst to his conversion sixty years prior.

‘I have lived and worked without flesh, fish or fowl, and all statements to the contrary are entered in the books of the Recording Angel as aggravated and outrageous falsehoods. During illnesses, doctors and family have tried in vain to make me drink meat extracts. Death is better than cannibalism.’ George Bernard Shaw

The Shelley Society put forward that his then radical diet ‘was not a mere dietetic whim, but an endeavour after a higher and better life for mankind, an attempt to bring the universe into sympathetic harmony, and to provide a bounteous feast from which none should be excluded.’

Shelley proclaimed ‘Never again may blood of bird or beast, Stain with its venomous stream a human feast’ and adhered to what was then referred to as a ‘natural diet’ ‘vegetable regimen’ or the ‘Pythagorean system’ - Pythagoras was also vegetarian, along with Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Nicholas Tesla, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Edison, Franz Kafka and Mahatma Ghandi, who once said ‘The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork’.

Romantic radical poet Percy Bysshe Shelley

Not everyone has been on board with the populist slow march towards a plant forward future. Old school restaurant chain Arby’s mocked vegetarians hard back in 2015 with this press release:

An Open Letter From Arby’s to Vegetarians Across America:
We respect you. We respect your life decisions. With that in mind, we want it to be abundantly clear that this letter is not meant to sway or convert you. We’re sharing this to offer our support…By now, you’ve likely heard the Arby’s tagline: We Have The Meats®. It’s tough to hear, but it is what it is. We have many meats. And we have quality meats….we launched a meat innovation that has likely tempted you: Brown Sugar Bacon. It’s our pepper bacon, glazed in-restaurant with brown sugar and then cooked to perfection. It may be hard to resist…even for you. Hardcore vegetarians likely won’t budge, but for those of you who are on the fringe or new to the game, avoidance can’t be easy.
We, at Arby’s, have created this temptation. So, we’d like to help.
We’re giving you a number to call: 1-855-MEAT-HLP. This is a Vegetarian Support Hotline. When your nose betrays you and alerts the rest of your senses to find and devour this sweet meat, please call 1-855-MEAT-HLP. You will receive the support you need to resist this gateway meat and get tips on how to avoid temptation. Delicious. Sizzling. Temptation.
Be strong. We’re here for you.
Sincerely,
Arby’s

According to journalist Daniela Galarza at Eater this is what happened if you called that number:

…you’ll be greeted by a soft-spoken female: “Hello, you have reached the Vegetarian Support Hotline…” You are given two options: Option 1 is for vegetarians who can’t stop thinking about the bacon; Option 2 is for vegetarians who have already given in and eaten the bacon. Callers are either instructed to “take a deep breath… and go with the salad” or are told “your secret is safe with us.”

I considered making a playlist to add to today’s Loose Connections reading experience but though the number of admittedly pretty terrible pro vegetarian songs is not inconsequential it’s just not really great playlist material.

However, I will leave you today with a tasty offering of the songs below - the gently humorous ‘I Don’t Eat Animals’ by folk artist Melanie Safka, written after a meaningful moment of connection with a cow, and the sinister social commentary ‘Little Animals’ from the Beasts of Bourbon:

Little animals
Cuddly friendly
Little animals
Tasty little animals
Useful little animals