Being environmentally minded, gentle folk, a significant percentage of our guests are vegetarian, and many others are trying to eat more healthily. Food and drink are an important part of a holiday, and it’s interesting to note France catching up with its offer of vegetarian and plant-based options. I thought I would have a look in this blog at what options are available for the veggie abroad in this, the most meaty of countries!
I was very excited the other day in the supermarket at Aixe-sur-Vienne — the one we tend to stop at on the way back from picking up guests from the airport — to see that Fleury Michon have produced a new range of “les tranches végé”. This product occupies the same niche as ham and has the same salty, umami flavour. It works in salads, sandwiches and omelettes. It’s a really great product, available in chickpea, kidney bean and, my favourite, red lentil varieties. It’s also high in protein.
Before you come at me with your “ooh, that’s so highly processed”, I would counter with: a) this is a ham substitute — have you ever seen the processing behind producing bright pink ham, which is demonstrably linked to bowel cancer? And b) actually, it has commendably few ingredients and hardly any ultra-processed bad guys. It does contain egg white, however, so isn’t strictly vegan.
I like that you can find it next to the product it replaces, i.e. in the ham and sliced poultry section. As a busy Mum/host/wife/cook, this makes sense to me, as I almost never have the luxury of buying an entire shop just for one type of diet, and don’t want to have to hunt for this stuff in some weirdo section in another part of the supermarket.
Protein is the nutrient of the hour, so your thoughts will probably turn at some point beanwards. Fortunately, the French love a good legume, so the selection in the tinned vegetable section of supermarkets is very good. Check out the lentilles préparées — they are so tasty. Just check they haven’t been cooked in goose fat. The jarred beans are nicer than the tins if you want to spend the extra money.
Mysteriously, butter beans are excluded from this aisle in the supermarket and are confined to the “strange foreign foods section” with the sweet chilli sauce, Marmite and ginger biscuits. I don’t know what they have done to deserve this treatment.
Halloumi — the saviour of many a vegetarian BBQ — is treated similarly disrespectfully. Many supermarkets don’t sell it at all, and when they do, they corral it away from the other “proper” cheeses, i.e. French ones, in a section of its own or with the Italian and Greek crew. Lidl sometimes stock it, whereupon rumours fly around the expat community and they sell out immediately. Grand Frais is a lovely supermarket which usually has it, but sadly the only stores in our area are in Limoges. Always worth a visit if you get the chance, though, for all their wonderful fresh produce.
The market on Wednesday mornings at Piégut-Pluviers is also a fertile hunting ground. There are several large fruit and veg stalls and many smaller specialist stalls — the mushroom lady is worth a mention here. The best mushrooms in Europe and as cheap as chips. Others sell things like mustards made with nettles and oils from local walnuts — all the plant eater’s friends for dressing salads and grilled vegetables.
Plant milks are widely available in supermarkets, although they tend to be in the Bio section — pronounced B.O., to the confusion of English speakers — but then also appear again, usually near the eggs. I still don’t understand the significance of this double appearance.
A lot of people seem to try and avoid soya, but this logic seems a little off. France is actually quite a large producer of soya. The domestic product is non-GMO and tends to go straight into soya milk, tofu and tempeh products. Ditto edamame beans. France also imports a huge quantity of soya, which does tend to come from cleared rainforest land and is generally genetically modified. But, and this is the absolutely crucial point: this is all used for animal feed. So if you want to reduce the amount of soya you consume, you should eat more soya products and less meat. Counterintuitive, isn’t it?
Which brings me onto cutlets, sausages and burgers. Honestly, I haven’t got the energy to argue with people about whether you call these things after the meat products they replace or not. France is slowly catching up with the UK in their availability, and they can be nice — if you fancy a bit of easy junk food. My favourites are Garden Gourmet La Panée — a sort of breaded chicken-type thing. The vegetable boulettes are nice too, in a wrap with some houmous. Better than the falafels, which are dry enough to be used instead of silica gel to absorb humidity. Knacki veggie hot dog sausages are genuinely indistinguishable from the real thing, which probably says more about how much meat is in the original than anything.
Also, if you are one of those people who enjoys saying “but why don’t you just eat a real sausage?” — firstly, you are definitely reading the wrong blog, and secondly, you may want to look up all the very good reasons why EVERYONE needs to be reducing their meat and dairy consumption, rather than just leaving it to a tiny number of very intense hard-core vegans and celebrities to maintain a perfect vegan diet.
Actually, we do eat meat. It’s delicious. We just try not to mindlessly mash it into our faces at every opportunity. Many of our meals are vegan. Some only have a tiny bit of meat in. Some are very meat-centred.
Our local economy relies on Limousine beef cattle. By and large, they seem to have a good life, kept “sous la mère”, out in fields with their mum and dad, with company and sunshine, and we want to support the local farmers who are our friends and neighbours.
We have some hard lines, though. We won’t eat or serve fish, as overfishing is a huge driver of climate change. Watch Seaspiracy if you want to know more. We do eat mussels occasionally, as it is possible to grow mussels sustainably — a word that is meaningless when applied to fish stocks. We prefer oat milk in coffee, but it’s disgusting in tea, so we usually keep some cow’s milk in the house for tea and visitors. If we go round to someone’s house and they serve us meat, we eat it and say thank you.
So you can see it’s not a clear-cut position, and some people say we are hypocrites – but if we must have a label we prefer omnivores with principles, which seems a very modern and appropriate form of response to the challenges the human race faces. Better, perhaps, than calling oneself a vegetarian, vegan, flexitarian, pescatarian, and then being rigidly inflexible about those arbitrary rules.
I saw a vegan the other day on Facebook state boldly that she thought a lot of people were vegan for the wrong reasons, and it only really counted if you did it for the animals — not like all these new environmental climate change vegans. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Anyway, just finally, and without meaning to be preachy in any way, it might be worth a quick canter through the reasons why we should all be reducing meat and dairy consumption, not just my idealistic friend on Facebook:
Climate: meat and dairy farming produces major greenhouse gas emissions, especially methane from cattle. Overfishing — or as we should call it these days, “fishing” — also contributes hugely to ocean biodiversity loss and climate change.
Animal welfare: most farm animals don’t live in nice fields in the Limousin, but in dark sheds in appalling conditions.
Land use: livestock farming uses huge areas of land for grazing and animal feed, leaving less space for wildlife.
Biodiversity: high meat and dairy consumption drives habitat loss, soil degradation and pressure on wild species.
Water and pollution: livestock farming uses large amounts of water and pollutes rivers and streams.
Health: eating more plant-based foods increases fibre intake and supports better long-term health.
Bon appétit!
