JANET STREET-PORTER: I don’t mind going meat-free now and again but Tesco’s Carl-and-Chloe vegan propaganda ad leaves me feeling nauseous
Vegans, like cyclists, are sensitive souls who can’t understand why meat eaters like me find so many of them humourless, self-righteous bores.
In their eyes, humans can’t eat meat a couple of days a week and opt for healthy vegetables the rest of the time.
Life is a series of all-or-nothing decisions. Eat a bit of everything and you’re an environmental vandal with no regard for animal welfare.
Militant vegans are like Stalinists. They see just two kinds of diet; a plant-based regime (which even shuns honey and avocados out of concern for bees) and the wrong regime.
Dairy products like delicious Camembert or double cream are the devil’s work.
Relentless campaigning to turn the world’s population away from eating meat and fish employs every PR trick in the book and their latest victory involves the UK’s largest retailer, Tesco.
The company (like so many others in the cut-throat world of retailing) has been quick to spot the potential of appealing to the vegan pound.
They have even appointed someone with the ridiculous title of Plant-Based Innovation, one Derek Sarno, whose job is to devise and shift as many alternatives to meat and fish products as possible.
Nothing is on sale in Tesco unless it is going to make a profit.
And the latest Tesco television ad campaign that accompanies this initiative is so ‘woke’ I felt nauseous.
It features Carl, a white working class single dad (tick that box for credibility) and Chloe, a slightly darker skinned beautiful little girl (tick another two boxes) who arrives home from school announcing ‘I don’t want to eat animals any more’.
And what does dad do? Does he discuss why she has come to that decision? Does he offer a compromise? No, Carl tells us ‘I blooming love my meat. But not as much as I love my little girl’ – so he caves in and makes Carl’s All-Change Casserole.
This sloppy looking mess uses a product called Tesco Plant Chef Meat-Free Cumberland-style Bangers’.
Result, little Chloe is blissfully happy – and we are told is ‘this is how you are a GOOD DAD’.
The latest Tesco television ad campaign features Carl, a white working class single dad (tick that box for credibility) and Chloe, a slightly darker skinned beautiful little girl (tick another two boxes) who arrives home from school announcing ‘I don’t want to eat animals any more’
Carl’s All-Change Casserole uses a product called Tesco Plant Chef Meat-Free Cumberland-style Bangers’.
According to Plant-Based Head of Innovation Derek Sarno, the creators of the ad were ‘encouraged to be brave’. Pass the sick bag!
This is what modern life has come to. Chloe isn’t offered an Indian or ethnic vegetarian dish from an ancient culture, but some lab-made product that is ‘Cumberland-Style’.
Anyone who cooks and enjoys real food will look at the word ‘style’ and understand what’s behind this ad.
Meat-free food that looks exactly like meat. Is that progress? And what about the really creepy secondary message, that to be a loving, good dad (and we know how single dads worry about not seeing their kids, or upsetting them in anyway which might affect that access) you have to give the little so-and-so’s exactly what they want.
If I had come home from school and said ‘I am not eating animals any more’, mum would have said – ‘OK, eat the potato off the top of the shepherd’s pie and the cabbage, I am not making anything special for you, there are four people in this house and your dad and I work all hours to make enough money to live on so eat what’s on your plate and shut up!’.
According to Plant-Based Head of Innovation Derek Sarno, the creators of the ad were ‘encouraged to be brave’
Although I wasn’t happy at the time, I respect that point of view and having rules certainly made me work hard and get on in life.
Vegans are not as numerous as they would have us believe- they make up just 3% of the UK population according to Kantar UK research.
Even the vegan society has estimated they only make up 1.6% of the population- around 600,000 people.
From my experience most vegans live in cities (where there are the most specialist shops and cafes) and are young.
In the USA around 3.4 per cent of the population are vegan – with one in four 24-35 year olds claming to be vegetarians.
And it’s a lifestyle that appeals to a certain age- research has found that Millennials make up a third of all vegans, with women outnumbering men in that age group by 5 to 1.
Result, little Chloe is blissfully happy – and we are told is ‘this is how you are a GOOD DAD’
I don’t dispute that shunning meat is growing in popularity – the number of people adopting a vegan diet quadrupled between 2014 and 2018, but numbers are still small.
Although you wouldn’t think that, judging by the amount of noise they make.
The success of the brainwashing campaign by a relatively small number of loud and pushy vegan activists can be measured by a hard-nosed retailer like Tesco choosing to promote vegan sausages in such a controversial way, implying shunning meat buys you love.
Farmers are outraged, and rightly so. The reality is, 73 per cent of the UK population still eat meat and most will continue to do so, in spite of all the vegan wailing.
There’s been a huge rise (up a third) in the number of non-vegans who eat meat-free meals regularly – on average, three main meals a week. So meat sales are sliding and farmers are under attack on all sides.
The big supermarkets are their main source of income. If Tesco and co start implying that meat is ‘bad’ for you, then a huge industry is likely to suffer.
The UK has the highest animal welfare standards in Europe and certainly higher than in the USA.
How often you eat meat is a personal choice, and including more fruit and vegetables in our diet is better for our hearts and general health. But things have got so one-sided I can’t imagine an ad for lamb chops in which Carl serves up free range meat to Chloe. In the current climate, that’s a non-starter.
Tesco (like all the other major supermarkets) will climb on any bandwagon in the name of sales. If they really cared about the planet they would have abandoned plastic wrapping decades ago, turned off all that lighting in their stores, and built eco-housing over their huge super-stores, many of which were constructed on greenfield sites.
Instead they feed us Carl and Chloe’s Cumberland-style sausages. Greenwash of the highest order.
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