Meat Free is the New Rock 'N Roll
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[Photo caption:] Ahead of National Vegetarian Week, Sir Paul McCartney tells Xanthe Clay why, thanks to his late wife Linda, it’s easier than ever to go veggie. Credit:
2017 MPL Communications Ltd/Photographer: David Loftus. All rights reserved.Meat-free is the new rock ‘n’ roll: Sir Paul McCartney on Linda's vegetarian legacy
By Xanthe Clay
13 May 2018 • 7:27am
It wasn’t always easy being vegetarian, even for rock stars. Sir Paul McCartney, who ditched meat and fish from his diet back in the mid Seventies, groans at the memory. “You wouldn’t have believed it.”It’s true: we’ve forgotten how alien a meat-free diet seemed to most people in the last millennium. These days, vegetarians have never had it so good.
Even if we aren't all committing to removing meat from our diets completely, it seems that - call it flexitarianism, reducetarian, or simply cutting back - a significant chunk of the population will willingly go without some of the time. More than a quarter of evening meals in the UK are now meatless, and the supermarkets and suppliers are falling.....
The rest of the article is only available with a subscription.... if anyone in the UK has read the article and can post excerpts or main highlights of it in this thread, it would be appreciated
Last year, when a similar article from Paul and family was published, there were a few vegetarian recipes from the family that were included, so always enjoy seeing those. -
This article contains excerpts from the Telegraph interview mentioned in previous post.
https://www.livekindly.co/paul-mccartney-vegetarian-linda-legacy/
Vegan Musician Sir Paul McCartney Reflects on Linda McCartney’s Vegetarian Legacy
Charlotte Pointing
Associate Editor, UK | Contactable via charlotte@livekindly.coPosted by Charlotte Pointing | May 14, 2018
In an interview with British newspaper, the Telegraph, former Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney, opened up about his late wife Linda and her meat-free legacy.
Linda McCartney died of breast cancer in 1998, but her self-titled vegetarian and vegan food range lives on – with former husband, Paul, and her daughters, ethical fashion designer, Stella and cookery writer, Mary, still heavily involved with the brand. The tasting process, in particular, is an element that Paul particularly enjoys. “It’s quite a good thing…I’m often at my music studio in Sussex on the south coast, so I’ll get the chefs from the company to come down and cook everything up,” he explained. “So me and the guys and girls at the studio will get tasting it and deciding what we like best.”
The Linda McCartney range has seen great success in recent years, launching new vegan and veggie products frequently. Vegan cocktail sausages, vegan chorizo sausages, and vegan beef roast are just some of the meat and dairy-free foods that have been released by the company over the last year. However, this amount of choice wasn’t always on offer for Paul and Linda in the beginning, the musician explained.
“I remember going out to a dinner with my then father-in-law at Claridge’s,” Paul, who founded the Meat Free Monday campaign alongside his daughters, recalled. “I said ‘I’m vegetarian,’ and they looked puzzled. They brought me a plate of vegetables – just steamed veg. They couldn’t think beyond that.” The incident partly sparked the idea for the veggie range, according to Paul. “We thought, hmm, we’ve got to try to do something to remedy this,” he noted.
Linda wanted the new range to be inclusive, simple, and to cater for everyone’s tastes, Paul recalled. “Linda used to say [the meals were] for if one of your kids has suddenly gone vegetarian, or you’ve got a friend coming round who is vegetarian, and what do you feed them?” Paul said.
“I think it’s always good to question norms,” Paul concluded to the paper. “I remember saying, just a minute, just because I’ve always eaten meat and two veg, all my life, do I have to stay like that? I found it was really great to open myself up and say, I can change, there is no harm in that, or as Linda used to say, ‘It’s allowed.’ I loved that. That was one of her great sayings.”
Image Credit: Paul McCartney
