The Reader: New vegan burgers are all about giving us more choice

IN his column [“Quite why a vegetarian would want to eat a ‘bloody’ burger beats me”, November 13], David Sexton has missed the point about the “bleeding” vegan burgers which have arrived in the UK.

It is not about making products for people who don’t eat animals. In fact, the new burgers are primarily targeted at meat eaters in a bid to convince them to eat less meat, hence why they are stocked in the aisles next to meat products. Surely this can only be a good thing?

Which part of an animal do burgers and sausages come from? They are simply names for human-created products which allow people to eat meat in a convenient way. Why shouldn’t us vegetarians use the same terms?
Nathan Rodgers

David Sexton asks, “Why would you want to eat mock meat? Because you always liked eating meat but now you think it is wrong for your health, for the planet’s, for the animal…?”. Spot on! That’s three great reasons.

Soon we could have a straight choice between two cheap, healthy and delicious burgers, one made from meat, one plant-based. What kind of person would insist on eating the one that came from the environmentally costly exploitation of a suffering animal?
Josh Hulbert

EDITOR'S REPLY

Dear Nathan and Josh

Thank you for your responses. I certainly agree that anything that persuades people to eat fewer burgers is to be encouraged.

Despite the trend for gourmet versions, burgers remain the commonest form of cheap meat-eating, good neither for consumers nor forindustrially farmed animals sacrificed to keep costs down. But why not then either eat less but better meat, paying more to make sure it is well-sourced? Or just rejoice in the deliciousness of vegetables for what they are? Instead of beetroot “blood”, a nice borscht, say? Why would anybody who cares about what they eat be enticed by pretend meat?

As it happens, recent investigations have found some vegan processed foods that emulate meat have very little nutritional value, while being high in salt, fat, sugar and preservatives. Veggie burgers are on average much saltier than meat ones. There’s still no better advice than Michael Pollan’s: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

David Sexton, Columnist

Our negotiators have wasted time on the wrong idea of Brexit

Anthony Hilton’s incisive piece [“We think the EU will be hit by Brexit — but we don’t get it”, November 13] outlining the simple factual choice involved in Brexit — which all the Conservative bluster about “sovereignty” has never addressed — underlines how much time has been wasted by David Davis and our other negotiators. And how much public money, I wonder, has also been wasted over what is intangible to all but those in government? Is this really democracy?
Steve Gooch

Anthony Hilton writes that “Article 50 is concerned with the divorce. Only when we have separated can we begin to embark on the future relationship.” The EU has driven the sequencing of talks but there was nothing in Article 50 saying that its interpretation was correct. The Government made a huge mistake in accepting it.
Tim Russell

Britain owes a big debt to the Poles

Jakub Krupa doesn’t talk in my name in his article [“Poles will not forget British hospitality in days of exile”, November 13]. If anybody, it’s the British who should not forget who gave them the secret of Enigma, who helped them fight the Germans in the Second World War and who the British betrayed in Jalta. All we got after the war was the bill to pay for using your aeroplanes and fuel during the Battle of Britain. So why Krupa calls for us Polish to say Dziekuje — “thank you” — is a mystery to me.
Daniel Nowakowski

It’s great that Jakub Krupa celebrates Polish-English amity. So do I, and I am delighted that there are so many Poles here. But why has Poland not taken the British side in the Brexit negotiations? Poles should stand by their traditional ally, the UK.
Hugo de Burgh

We all know people like Ben and Izzy

A joy to look forward to every weekday on The Reader page is the London Calling cartoon by Kipper Williams.

I suspect we all know folk such as Ben and Izzy (or, for some, they may even be a bit too close to home for comfort).

For all their environmental angst they call for pizzas in unrecyclable containers (no doubt using the latest mobile devices full of conflict minerals) to be delivered by motorbike, and (it seems) they drove to the recycling centre, in the edition you published last Thursday [November 8].

They and their posing chums would probably also argue that it’s OK, yah, to drive to Heathrow for their fabulous flight to Phuket because the plane burns more fuel and creates more pollution than their car.
Gordon Thompson

Ramsgate plan is just short-termism

I read with interest your leader column on November 13 about Ramsgate harbour being picked as an alternative to Dover if there’s a no-deal Brexit. Ramsgate is a town where no government agency has spent as much as £200,000, let alone £200 million, in the past 40 years.

This is yet another one of the many pet schemes that are periodically foisted on a town where its aspirations are crushed by constant recourse to short-term policy making. So far we have had an airport controversy, an unwanted parkway railway station and now this harbour.

As for JMW Turner, who as you say painted Ramsgate, he lived next door in Margate and he would notice quite a few changes to Ramsgate harbour, some good, some not so good.

Van Gogh did, however, stay in Ramsgate for a short period.
George Nokes