A few weeks into my V-Card experiment, a friend invited me to her house for the weekend. We had the standard chat about things to do, films to watch, and gossip to tell, when she dropped in the innocuous question, “You don’t have any dietary requirements, right?”

So little did she know (devastating really: how had the stunning prose of my weekly V-Card not reached her yet?). With the turning of what was meant to be an easy-catering get-together into a culinary equivalent of a 3,000m steeplechase race bearing heavy on me, I revealed the dreaded V-Card: “Well, yeah, I’ve got one. Vegan, y’know.”

With veganism comes guilt: I thought giving up Wensleydale with cranberries was the hard bit (#firstworldproblems – don’t blame me, I go to John’s) until the guilt of being a burden to other people hit. It’s ironic, really. Here I am, saving the environment, animals, my own health, and life in general, one non-dairy cheese slice at a time, but I’m getting a massive guilt trip out of it. So much for achieving inner peace and oneness with Mother Nature.

“Say you’re vegan, and you’ll need a Ted talk up your sleeve to explain yourself”

The thing is, veganism is wholly self-inflicted. I won’t be sent into an anaphylactic shock after consuming gelatine, nor will tucking into an egg cause swelling and a rash. I don’t have a holy script, god, or even a minor prophet to turn to for backup – unless, of course, you count my columnist deal with Varsity up there. Without even minor laxative effects in sight, going vegan is all about non-physical principles, and sometimes choosing to follow your own principles at the cost of adding extra effort to other people is hard.

For this particular weekend, my carnivore friend went to great efforts to order honey and whey free muesli for my two-day stay, scouring through the internet for vegan dinner recipes, being introduced to the trendy vegan social media on the side. Even my family’s yoghurt consumption habits haven’t gone untouched, as my dad has switched to Alpro Soy – though I like to maintain that this involved missionary work rather than a full-on crusade.

Planning a meal out now starts with eyes zooming in onto me, followed by ‘where can you eat?’ While eating out is not a big challenge, really, it does limit the choice. I always offer to go wherever and if everything else fails, have my pizza without cheese, or just ditch the dressing from the side salad, but British politeness prevents people from taking that option (and to be fair, I don’t actually mean that I’d be genuinely happy to sacrifice my meal for everyone else to get steaks in a steak-only joint). Being vegan in a social context often leaves me feeling like The Picky Eater who won’t be satisfied with anything, even if I have the backing of the ethics and the environment.

The V Card: The Makeover

It’s not only me, though, who feels that way, based on all the times my reasons for going vegan have come under crossfire. I once made the mistake of admitting that the V-Card had started as a project for Varsity rather than as a campaign for the animals of the world – to a person who had dutifully catered for my vegan needs. Turns out I should have had my philosophical act together: “I thought you were doing it for deep ethical principles! That’s why I went to all that effort!” 

Yes, it felt like turning the knife in my vegan guilt wound, but as a vegan you ultimately get used to your food choices becoming open to all public scrutiny. Say you don’t like aubergine because of the texture (you haven’t cooked it right) or tomatoes because of their flavour (that’s just weird), and you’ll be left in peace and no one will complain about the tomato-free food you’re opting for. Say you’re vegan, and you’ll need a Ted talk up your sleeve.

I thought going vegan would erase an ethical dilemma or two from my life. Never did I guess that it would introduce a new one to my daily existence. Here’s one for the philosophers among us: By opting to eat in a wholly vegan place, I’m saving the life of a cow in a place far removed from me, but at same time I’m witnessing the pain I’m inflicting on my carnivore friend who is failing to convince me that they’re actually happy to go with my needs. Is the pain I’m causing another human being worth the pain I’m saving the cow from? Discuss