Plant power: How a month of vegetarian living changed our family’s diet forever

With her eight-year-old daughter expressing the wish to eat a plant-based diet, writer Yvonne Hogan decided the whole household would join in for Lent

Yvonne Hogan with her daughters Eloise (3) and Ava (8). Photos: Gerry Mooney

Yvonne Hogan

For as long as she has been able to talk, my daughter Ava, now eight, has expressed concern about eating meat. To go from watching Peppa Pig to a breakfast of sausages never sat well with her. We had many conversations in which I assured her that animals in Ireland are well treated before we eat them and when she was aged four or five, we made a pact that we wouldn’t eat lamb or other baby animals. That settled the issue for a while.

Then, Greta Thunberg happened. Like the rest of the world, my daughter was enchanted and emboldened by this powerhouse of a girl. Greta’s message that our meat-based diet was accelerating climate change and ‘stealing her future’ consolidated my daughter’s instincts that we, as a family, ate too much meat. And I couldn’t disagree with her.