Jeremy Smith

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How the hospitality sector could get vegetarian food right (by a meat eater)

My vegetarian wife says that when I met her 15 years ago I pretended to be a vegetarian to impress her. She says I was pretending, because within months of us I was definitely off the wagon. Having ordered the vegan option at her sister’s wedding, I was discovered at midnight devouring a bacon-filled roll.

I am not a vegetarian. I’ve tried and failed to sustain my abstinence for more than a few weeks on many occasions. For what it is worth, I probably eat meat once a fortnight, and fish once a week. My achilles heel is cheese. Moving to France a few months ago has not helped me here.

However, because I am in the process of discovering my new home, I have done a lot more eating out, all in the name of research. And it has made me think a lot more about how the hospitality sector continually gets its approach to vegetarianism wrong. (And no this isn’t a cliche’d dig at how France doesn’t do vegetarian food. Quite the opposite. My wife has eaten better here than in London).

But whether in France, the UK or anywhere else, there are some simple ways that our sector could improve its approach to supporting plant-based diets. Doing this would do wonders for our impact on animal welfare, biodiversity, and the climate crisis, to say nothing of the health of our guests.

To finish this story, please read the original post on World Travel Market.