I’m often asked about veganism. It’s simple, I believe discrimination against species is as distasteful as any other kind

I have been a vegan for seven years. I prefer chocolate cakes to lentils, I don’t spend my evenings sifting through layers of moss in search of nutrients, I won’t eat it just because you made it and I don’t value sea kittens above humans. Although I had already been vegetarian for four years, I waited until I was about to leave home to tell my parents I was going vegan. Mum looked at me across the dinner table. “You’re not going to be awkward about it though, are you?”

I went vegan for ethical, not dietary reasons. I do not think humans have the right to oppress or abuse other species simply because they are intellectually weaker. Toddlers are intellectually weak, but you’re unlikely to find one in a casserole. To me, human rights and animal rights go together. Humans have a responsibility to care for animals and other humans because both have the ability to suffer. Both are capable of experiencing pleasure, fear and pain. I find discrimination on the grounds of species as distasteful as discrimination on the grounds of race or sex.

Ethical vegans are often asked variations of the same dilemmas. “If you were stranded in a barren wasteland, starving, and someone offered you a beef burger, would you refuse to eat it?” The answer is no. If I was literally starving and the hummus wells had run dry, I would eat the burger because my survival depended on it. But I don’t live in a barren wasteland, I live in Manchester, and since Media City was built we’ve had shops here. It is unnecessary for me to consume animal products for nutritional purposes. Vegans can obtain all the nutrients available in an omnivorous diet with the exception of vitamin B12, which many vegan foods are fortified with.

In recent years, there has been a vast increase in the number of dietary vegans; the most high-profile being Bill Clinton and Mike Tyson. Some people go vegan as a way of losing weight or lowering their cholesterol, but they choose not to look into the ethics of their diets. They know how many calories are in a raisin, but they don’t know that male dairy calves, useless to the dairy industry, are usually killed at birth. The same fate awaits newborn male chicks in egg farms and hens that cannot lay the unnaturally high number of eggs their industry demands. Many people are not aware that dairy cows are separated from their calves just days after they are born so humans can drink their milk. Free-range and organic farming methods are no exception. Animals, like humans, should not be viewed purely as economic commodities.

Another thing vegans are often questioned about is their priorities. “Why would you care about intensive cattle farming when there are children dying of malaria in Ethiopia?” There doesn’t have to be a competitive element to compassion. We don’t have to pick sides. “Sorry, I’m afraid I can only care about one thing at a time, and today’s thing is sustainable recycling in Honduras. Now be a dear and pass me the stilton.”

There is not a clear divide between ethical and dietary vegans, and dietary vegans have certainly increased the availability of vegan options. When I went vegan, most soya milk curdled in instant coffee, and the one commonly available brand of vegan “cheese” looked and tasted like plasticine. Vegan cupcakes are now impossible to avoid in the more self-consciously fashionable parts of town, and for this I thank the dietary vegans.

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Most US states have ended the practice of fingerprinting food stamp recipients; only in Arizona and New York City does the practice persist.

A Greek cookbook entitled Starvation Recipes has proved hugely successful. Tell us your culinary belt-tightening tips

Raisin pulp instead of sugar? Stray dog instead of a rib-eye steak? Cupful of crumbs instead of a slice of bread? Things might be tough, but has it really come to this? Well, if the success of an apocalyptically named Greek cookbook Starvation Recipes means anything, then planning frugal meals is something we should all be preparing for. Compiled by Eleni Nikolaidou, a Greek historian and high-school teacher who combed through 6,000 newspaper clippings written during the Nazi occupation of Greece during the second world war, the book aims to help readers make the most of meagre food supplies.

Do you have any austerity busting recipes? Anything you’ve concocted during harder times that you’ve stuck with ever since? Share your top tips for turning meagre rations into culinary delights.

In this special Jewish food edition of the podcast, Jason is joined by the doyenne of Jewish food Claudia Roden and by leading food critic Giles Coren. Together they sample Tunisian Jewish food in the kitchen of personal chef, Fabienne Viner-Luzzato.

Jewish food is at the centre of all Jewish festivals and family gatherings: whether it’s chicken soup or lokshen pudding, falafel or bourekas, behind every Jewish dish is a story, of wandering, exile, integration – and bloating …

Claudia explains why she once filled her kitchen with testicles and argues that Sephardi food, with its origins in Spain and north Africa, is far more gourmet than the peasant food of Ashkenazi cuisine from eastern Europe – while Giles counters with memories of his grandmother’s delicious cholent.

They ask if there’s any truth to the stereotype of the overcooking Jewish mother and explain why fish and chips is actually a Jewish creation – from London’s East End. And we’ll have the age-old kneidel debate: heavy or fluffy?

• Produced by the Jewish Community Centre for London, Sounds Jewish will be taking a summer break but will be back to celebrate the Jewish New Year in the autumn.

guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle

What he’s said so far suggests he doesn’t regard the institution of marriage as important at all

Ed Miliband was criticised by Evan Davis on the Today programme yesterday for failing to articulate what Labour’s vaunted “alternative” to the government’s spending cuts would be, but he could be criticised just as much for failing to articulate any good reason for getting married. He and his long-term partner, Justine Thornton, are to marry on 27 May at a country house hotel near Nottingham. They are in their 40s, they have two children, and they have an apparently contented relationship. He is an avowed atheist. He believes that families can be just as stable outside marriage as within it. So why does he also maintain that marriage is “a very important institution”?

What he has said so far about his decision to wed suggests, on the contrary, that he doesn’t regard the institution as important at all. Last year, in a magazine interview, he reminded readers that Justine was not his wife, adding jokingly (but tellingly): “Thank God for that, probably.” Later he said he was “too busy” to get married. But after deciding to marry, and at a time when he is presumably still busy, he told the local newspaper in his Doncaster constituency: “This is just something we think is right for us . . . It’s the right time for us to do this, and I’m really looking forward to a lovely day.” That got us nowhere, but yesterday he went a little further when he told Davis that to get married was his way of expressing his love and commitment to Justine.

But in the same breath he reiterated his view that stable families come in different forms and that whether to marry or not is a “very personal choice”. What he failed to make clear was why he, the atheist, made this personal choice when he believes there are other equally valid ways to express love and commitment to a partner. He was adamant that he wasn’t getting married for political reasons (or out of fear of the Daily Mail, which likes to point out whenever possible that he will be the first-ever leader of a major political party “to live with his family out of wedlock”). He has said before that he thinks voters are “pretty relaxed” about the idea of a prime minister with a family but no wife, and he clearly doesn’t worry about such an unmarried prime minister having a key role to play in the appointment of Church of England bishops.

Although marriage has declined sharply in recent years, and 44% of children are now born to unmarried mothers, an awful lot of couples get round to it in the end, often with sons and daughters in attendance. In this godless country, they are usually motivated by one of two things: the urge to have a big party and the desire to clear up any legal doubts about inheritance rights. Miliband has mentioned neither, and his aides have been putting it about that his wedding will be small and low-key, and so achingly modern that he won’t even have a best man (though there could be a reason for that). So we are left with the question: why is he getting married? Your guess is as good as mine.

Misguided vegan parents

A French couple have been on trial this week for “neglect and food deprivation” following the death of their 11-month-old daughter. The charges sound wrong. From the evidence in court, Sergine and Joel Le Moaligou would seem to have been not so much neglectful as disastrously misguided in the treatment of baby Louise. They are vegans who distrust traditional medicine. Louise was fed only on her mother’s milk. And when she lost weight and fell ill from bronchitis, her parents refused to take her to hospital but decided to treat her themselves with advice from books. These must have been odd books, for the mother’s lawyer said Louise had been treated with cabbage poultices, mustard, camphor, earth and clay, as opposed to anything sensible.

While I have never been attracted to alternative medicine, I wouldn’t be surprised if it does someone good. And I’m tempted by vegetarianism (if not veganism), and enthusiastic about organic food. But it’s beyond my understanding how people can reject the enormous progress made by medical science, with its record of saving millions of lives. What are the grounds for distrusting it so? Some people have an instinctive hatred of any form of establishment. The problem is how to cure them of this phobia, which, in tragic cases such as this one, may cause them to lose a child they love.

Neat gin?

The bloody mary has been described by a professional American analyst of flavours (there would be such a person) as “the world’s most complex cocktail”, but he gives the reassuring advice that it doesn’t matter how cheap the vodka is you use, because its taste is swamped by the tomato juice and other spicier ingredients such as celery salt, pepper, Tabasco, lemon juice, horseradish and Worcestershire. Much rubbish is talked about cocktails, especially the dry martini: whether it be shaken or stirred, and how much vermouth should be added to the gin. Convention holds that the amount of vermouth should be miniscule, and the late Auberon Waugh decided to make dry martinis out of neat gin with no vermouth at all. These, he said, were hugely admired by American visitors, like the emperor’s new clothes.

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

The EU ruling that Cornish pasties must be made in Cornwall underlines the importance of the world’s many food specialities

Cornish pasties, the 19th century miner’s own kind of packed lunch, must now be made in Cornwall. The EU says so, they have even made it a rule. For nine years, the Cornish Pasty Association fought for what is called protected geographical indication (PGI) – and it has won. Alongside its geographical origin comes a whole set of rules on how one produces Cornish pasties: their shape, the nature of the filling and the baking process. And, of course, no artificial flavouring or any additives should get into them.

In other words, PGIs – and their French counterparts, appellation d’origine protégée (AOPs) and appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOCs) – are “an official mark of quality awarded to regional products with specific characteristics and taste produced with traditional methods”. Do you remember other Homeric AOC battles? There was the three-year “holey” war between Swiss and French Gruyère makers, when French producers, astonishingly arrogant, demanded a super AOC to protect their Gruyère (the one with holes in). The Swiss cheese-makers suddenly woke up from their blissful life and invoked ancient Roman history to win their case: who dared steal the limelight from their – far superior, in my view – un-holed Gruyère! The EU thought the French were pushing it a bit far and holey Gruyère makers retreated.

You may also remember the 20-year battle fought by camembert producers? They bickered about the nature of their AOC: should camembert, which “smells like the feet of God”, according to cheese addict Will Studd, be made with pasteurised or unpasteurised milk? The hand-moulding, pro-unpasteurised artisan producers finally won the argument against Lactalis (the second largest cheese producer in the world, industrially producing 80,000 camemberts a day), which simply wanted to renegotiate with the French authorities the way of making camembert while retaining their AOC. Cheeky!

All those endless battles might sound, like Gargantua’s Picrocholine wars, ridiculously trite. However, I’d say that they touch on something fundamental: one’s belonging to le terroir. In today’s time, in “our global village”, such terms may sound conservative or simply passé. In fact, they are the only tangible link we still have with reality. No matter how “globalised” we have become, we all come from somewhere. Food, too. It may, throughout the ages, have been coloured, influenced, or changed by external elements – as the gastronomic wizard Claudia Roden has written about extensively. However, terroir, or “from the land”, shouldn’t be dismissed. Terroir doesn’t mean conservatism, it means diversity. Against a globalised grub, it stresses the importance of the world’s many specialities. In the same way as it seems better to buy vegetables from local growers, it is logical to taste local specialities everywhere you travel. Terroir is a window on the world worth fighting for.

Tell me about your favourite local dish. The winner (arbitrarily chosen by me) will get a pasteurised camembert from my favourite fromager in Normandy.

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink