A meat-eating friend recently suggested to me that there was something ‘weird’ about vegans being willing to eat commercial products that resemble meat, such as soy-based sausages or burgers, as if to be a ‘real’ vegan it was necessary to overturn millions of years of evolutionary history and suddenly declare that meat was repulsive. This is a ridiculous idea because we are, historically, a meat-eating species and we can’t wish our history away. This doesn’t mean that most vegans aren’t repulsed or saddened by what they see in butcher’s shop windows, because they are. But this is only because they know what those animals had to endure before they were sliced up or ground into mincemeat. So, don’t think there is anything odd about becoming vegan and still liking the idea of eating meat or enjoying the smell of it cooking. Doing so is in your DNA and if you have an itch to scratch I recommend a vegan sausage sizzle occasionally. Those sausages will soon become the only meat-like thing that interests you.