We recently had the opportunity to visit the Pork Lovers bus tour, which was aimed at helping to encourage those who have an interest in pork enjoy healthier cuts of pork (compared to the less healthy options of sausage and bacon, which are both fatty and don’t really add anything to a balanced diet – although they are obviously very tasy!).

When we had visited the bus, we thought that given the current Brexit situation, the controversial part of our visit might be that it was EU-funded. However, as we allow comments on our blog, we soon found out that actually the controversy stemming from our post was that we had the gall to try to futher the aim of the Pork Lovers bus and write our support for their ambition of helping to foster a healthier enjoyment of meat.

Having intially thought that we could respond to the trolling (see here) that came our way by suggesting that it might be wise to allow debate and choice, and perhaps even that as humans we are able to make our own decisions over our diet, it became clear that the vegan trolling we were experiencing was far from responsive to rational conversation.

By choosing to eat meat, we were compared to being cannibals, likened to the Nazis, and repeatedly told that we would get cancer from eating sausages and that was how the animals would get their revenge (which somewhat missed the point of our post aimed at helping to promote healthier eating of pork!).

While no one here at Leedsfoodie.co.uk is vegan, we are looking forward to shortly trying a new range of vegan food at Wagamama, we have previously enjoyed vegan cake making at Le Pain Quotidien in town, and have no problem with those who enjoy this diet as there are clearly some health benefits to this choice. Perhaps though the point that the trolls seemed to miss was this key word: choice.

While you may not agree with meat eating or the drinking of milk or even the enjoyment of honey, there is no reasonable argument to say that your will must be imposed on everyone as that simply isn’t how society works. In this regard we fully believe in the idea of allowing those who want to push certain diets to do so and to produce debate and inform others of their ideas. However, whatever your diet and whatever your view on a subject, there is simply never an excuse to try to forcefully impose your view and belief system upon others.

We welcome all (non-threatening and abusive comments) and would love to hear your views on healthy diets and ideas for how we should be eating, but we kindly ask that you don’t try to attack or force your opinion on other people and feel that you are doing the right thing by doing so.