Friday Life’s own Jaine Blackman reports on the pros and cons of trying to be a vegan

By the time you read this, unless I have slipped up and fallen upon a particularly succulent steak in Cornmarket, I will have finished my 31-day vegan challenge.

I’ve been taking part in Veganuary (like Movember but minus meat, fish, seafood and dairy products... and the facial hair) along with another 3,300 people in the UK.

Not a huge number but not bad given it’s the first year of the initiative and that you have to give up bacon butties, cheese on toast and milk on your cereal.

Except you don’t, really. There are plenty of alternatives to what we eat and it’s been interesting to try a new way for a month.

Here’s a few of the things I discovered:

Beardie weirdies
People have an image of vegans as sandal-wearing, brown rice-eating, humourless types, with beards, who bang on endlessly about how we should all do our bit to save the world. Well, I did and I was wrong – apart from the brown rice eating. During the month I’ve walked in their (non-leather) shoes, chatted to a few vegans and, honestly, they look just like me or you and in many cases a lot better. Singer Leona Lewis, already vegetarian, took the next step to be vegan for January. Even US mega-stars Beyonce and Jay-Z took on their own 22-day challenge last year – upbeat people with an infectious enthusiasm.

Eating out
Restaurants which offer well thought-out vegan dishes, let alone a choice, are few. Oxford does have vegan-friendly eateries (The Gardener’s Arms, The Nosebag and Al-Shami came recommended) but often it’s a case of “hold everything but the chips”. “No, not cheesy ones!” Restaurants now seem to have got used to offering vegetarian options. It would be great if they went further to offer dairy-free options too.

Home dining
I did most of the challenge not having to cook for anyone but myself, which made things easy. Eating at friends, one came up with a fantastic Indian spread which satisfied the omnivores, vegetarians... and me. But another, despite having been told to hold everything but the vegetables on Sunday lunch, left off the meat but added gravy and cheese sauce.

Fake steaks
There are a fair amount of fake meat, cheese and replacement products out there and not just in health food shops. Ocado has a good selection and I was impressed with their home delivery (ocado.com). It helps not to expect the substitutes to taste like the real thing (in some cases ANYTHING like the real thing) but just judge them on their own merits. I liked the Fry’s Family products (and the glowing bunch pictured on the packs are a great advert for their diet). It’s a bit trial and error – I tried three different “milks” before I found one I liked. Vegusto (vegusto.co.uk) has been offering a starter pack of cheese and meat substitutes at £10 (55 per cent off and free delivery) for Veganuary.

Bodily functions
To say I was a little windy at the start of the challenge is an understatement. It did calm down... or perhaps I got used to clenching my buttocks in public. “You’ll lose weight. You never see a fat vegan,” my boyfriend said with what I thought was too much glee. He was wrong. Perhaps if I had a sweet tooth, cutting back on desserts, milk chocolate and cream would have made an impact, but I don’t. As salsa and taco chips were still on the menu, nuts are calorie-packed, and my fears than vegan wine would be scarce and expensive were unfounded, being both reasonable and plentiful at my local Co-op, my weight remained the same. And how did I feel? I’ll leave the nutritional arguments to the pro and con camps but by and large I felt the same as before I started, neither tired and washed out nor envigorated and full of energy. Just, as always, depending on how late a night I’d had and what I’d done.

In conclusion
Veganuary is raising awareness of the impact food choices have on your body, the animals and the world. And it did make me think. A founder of Veganuary, Jane Goodall, said: “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

Some statistics hit home to me: in a world where 750 million people go hungry each night, one-third of the world’s grain is fed to farmed animals, land the size of five football pitches will grow enough meat to feed two people; or grain to feed 24; or soya to feed 61. And I have to confess, I did bang on about it a bit.