With Christmas over for another year and while the memory of feeling ‘stuffed’ from your Christmas turkey lunch is still fresh in your mind. I thought I would take this opportunity to discuss turkey, as you begin your New Year’s resolutions and prepare to reduce your meat consumption January (now famously called Veganuary).

Without frightening you too much here are some facts about turkey:

630 million turkeys are produced for meat each year globally, 240 million are produced in the United States and over 240 million in the EU. Commercially grown turkeys have been selectively bred for fast growth and have disproportionately large breast muscles. They are slaughtered when they are between 9 and 24 weeks of age and many weigh up to 20 kg.

In the EU over 90% of turkeys are kept indoors for intensive farming up to 25,000 of them have no outdoor access and are kept in sheds.

If you are insistent on eating turkey at Christmas at least try and buy it from a small producers who produce turkeys for the Christmas market and who keep turkeys in open barns with natural lighting, ventilation and some space. This (at lest) is not as cruel but is still far from ideal.

A lot of vegans don’t like the taste of meat and this is the reason they become vegan, however I and millions of others around the world love to have a meat substitute once or twice a week and Christmas is no different.

This is why I decided to make a vegan turkey and a vegan gammon with VBites vegan sausages wrapped in vegan bacon – a copy of our traditional pigs in blanket. Most of the Christmas plate we always have is the same as we have every Sunday for our Sunday roast.

If like me one of your favourite components is cauliflower cheese why not try the new Applewood Vegan smoky paprika cheese as an alternate in your cauliflower cheese dish, available in Asda, it’s the best selling Vegan cheese. It melts and is stringy with a great smoky paprika taste, try adding some Marmite, assuming you’re a Marmite lover like me that is.

Happy New Year!

For more great recipes go to VBites.com and Veganuary.com