McCartneys beef up Linda’s message for part-time vegetarians

Like all good marketing campaigns these days, it started with a popular YouTube video. Within a week, Paul and Linda McCartney’s Heart Of The Country video had received 80,000 hits.

The psychedelic 40-second animation begins with a guitar-playing cow, a suited fox trumpeter and a frog on drums being photographed by a retro-style Linda.

She then leads them through the countryside, gives a cat a veggie burger and cooks a scrumptious feast for all the woodland folk.

The purpose of all this fanfare was the launch of a new selection of chilled Linda McCartney Foods, the vegetarian range the late campaigner first started in 1991, seven years before her death.

Next week the animated ad will be shown on TV, with a voiceover from celebrity vegetarian Elvis Costello.

The fervently veggie McCartney family are hoping the new #LoveLinda campaign will help boost the numbers of those who are opting out of eating meat – and those who are part-time vegetarians, or “flexitarians”.

It’s the latest blitz by Sir Paul and his daughters Stella and Mary, who launched Meat-Free Mondays back in 2009 to encourage people to do their bit for the planet by reducing the environmental impact of the meat industry. These days it’s certainly more expensive to be a full-time meat-eater – prices reached record highs in 2011 – so it’s little surprise that last February the European Commission predicted meat consumption would decline in the EU by a further 0.4 per cent this year.

And in the wake of the recent scare about horse DNA being found in meat products, some people might be thinking about whether they shouldn’t just give flesh the cold shoulder.

After the Rio +20 Summit last June, the UN recommended a global reduction of meat consumption, while a report by Mintel suggested the meat-free market would be worth £949m by the end of 2012.

In 2008, it was estimated that five per cent of the UK population was vegetarian. This is predicted to double in the next two years, according to global trends agency The Food People.

Health advice about cutting down on red meat to reduce heart disease is part of the reason.

The Changing Face Of Vegetarianism report, commissioned by Linda McCartney Foods, also predicts a rise in those opting out of eating meat most of the time – the flexitarians.

Charles Banks of The Food People, says: “Twenty years ago, vegetarianism was scoffed at, but of late there’s been a seismic shift towards celebrating vegetables and opting to eat less meat. We expect meat-free eating and flexitarianism to soon be a mega trend.”

I’ve been cutting down my meat intake incrementally for years. While I still eat it occasionally because I like the taste and tradition – Christmas wouldn’t be the same without turkey – I think of myself as a part-time vegetarian, which means I always get my five-a-day, I get to be adventurous in the kitchen and my wallet’s healthier too.

I became a flexitarian when I moved in with my now husband back in 2006. He’s a one-time vegan, now pescatarian (fish-eater).

When we’d pooled our resources there seemed to be no point in cooking one thing for him and one for me. We never cook meat in the house, but alternate between various meat alternatives, including the Cauldron, Quorn and Linda McCartney ranges, and freshly-cooked risottos, tofu stir-fry and other ingenious ways to get our protein.

I prepare lunches to take to work that are often last night’s leftovers and mostly prefer a cheese sandwich to ham, chicken or beef.

Tonight we’re having Quorn “chicken” curry which, when all’s said and done, is pretty indistinguishable from the real thing – and healthier.

At my parents’ it’s a different story – my mother insists on getting some iron into me at 
every opportunity and it’s hard to resist her roast beef on a Sunday.

However, I didn’t realise how far I’d come until my hen party, when two of the 12 hens were vegetarian and so I booked a room in a vegetarian restaurant, knowing we’d all have a good meal.

It certainly helps that celebrities and leading chefs are embracing cooking for vegetarians.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall believes in being a “selective omnivore”, while Elvis Costello says: “Linda (McCartney) always made it seem that you wouldn’t be joining a secret weird society by being vegetarian.”