JANET STREET-PORTER: Sorry vegans, but you’ve had your chips! With shoppers finally seeing through the meat falsity and sales crumbling faster than a vegan sausage, I’m celebrating with a REAL bacon sandwich

Hurrah! The sale of counterfeit meat products is on the rise, mainly because consumers are not willing to pay three to FIVE times as much for something that looks and tastes similar to real meat, but is (allegedly) much better for us because it helps to save the planet and is healthier. Eat a vegan burger and you’re closer to God – or at least your gut.

Thank goodness consumers aren’t stupid and are starting to realize that modern veganism is a huge con artist, a religion with fake gods and dubious credentials. A set of beliefs that demonize our most cherished dishes, from black pudding to steak and kidney pie.

I will live to be at least 95 and probably a hundred, and I will also cherish a full English breakfast every Saturday morning until my last breath. Real bacon, real black pudding and eggs that come from a healthy chicken. No vegan sausages at JSP Towers! Meat in moderation is my mantra.

Experts say that we adopt a healthier lifestyle by eating less meat and more oily fish. But we don’t swallow fake substitutes instead. Beyond Meat, the company that partnered with McDonald’s to produce the McPlant vegan burger, saw sales drop by a third in recent months. Backed by Silicon Valley techies like Bill Gates, along with movie stars like Leo DiCaprio, Beyond Meat has plummeted in value from a $10 billion valuation in 2019 to less than $1 billion today.

Back in the UK, Pret a Manger has closed half of its vegetarian and vegan shops and a British company – Meatless Farm – has gone bankrupt. Last year, The Vegan Kind – the UK’s first online vegan store – also collapsed. Beyond Meat was one of the largest producers of vegan meat, so their slump represents a major change in purchasing habits.

Thank goodness consumers aren’t stupid and are starting to realize that modern veganism is a huge scam, a religion with false gods and dubious credentials, writes Janet Street-Porter

Shoppers are simply tired of the gimmicks and expensive meat substitutes, with food prices generally still not returning to pre-pandemic levels. According to Grocer magazine, most supermarkets are cutting counterfeit meat products by 10%, reducing vegan offerings and focusing on price ranges.

With some chefs refusing to put vegan dishes on their menus (because they claim it’s unprofitable to cater for a tiny minority), is the big vegan scam finally hitting the buffers? The horribly smug movement that aimed to make carnivores like me feel dirty, unclean, pretty stupid at best, and environmental vandals at worst.

Vegans only make up 2% of the UK population – but that’s an extremely vocal, self-righteous group of people.

Of course, some vegans eschew animal products because of perfectly understandable religious beliefs, and a minority have been told to restrict their diets for medical reasons. But the vast majority of vegans are sadly misled into thinking that their holier-than-thou diet regimens will extend their lives and make them happier. There is no evidence that this will happen, and they must eat protein from another source (if not meat and fish) to ensure bone density.

Adopting a vegan regimen costs a fortune most cannot afford and it certainly won’t stop global warming. Producing realistic vegan meat is a complex technological feat involving a minimum of 20 ingredients, protein powders and E numbers for taste and color. The result is a synthetic concoction that’s more highly processed than most junk food vegans despise. It’s certainly more factory-made than a fresh chicken, a leg of lamb or a pack of Tesco’s finest ground beef.

I don’t see the point in giving up meat to eat something that looks exactly the same. Would an Italian Nonna cook the most delicious lasagna for her vegetarian guests with fake meat? I do not think so. She would replace it with a delicious pasta sauce made with creamy ripe tomatoes, or plain white onions simmered for hours until they turned into a mouth-watering mess. Italian cuisine is 75% vegetarian – for taste, for seasonal influences and for connection to the terrain where the ingredients are grown.

In this country we import more than three-quarters of our food. We’re addicted to choice, feasting on strawberries at Christmas and asparagus all year round.

We go on and on about the environment, but we eat tons of air miles every week.

Huge greenhouses in the UK are heated all year round to produce our insatiable cravings for tomatoes, berries and salad, even in the winter months

The diet generally considered the healthiest in Europe is that of relatively poor farmers living around the Mediterranean. Cucina Povera – the kitchen of the poor – is very fashionable among the eating out classes. Trendy chefs embrace slow-cooking the poorest with cheap cuts of meat, lots of legumes, seasonal vegetables, the best olive oil and minimal salt – and then charge a fortune at Michelin-starred restaurants.

The vegan crusade – and the message has been spread with an evangelical fervor – has led high street retailers to jump on board in hopes of scoring sales with millennials and college students, where the vegan movement has had the most converts.

Some fake meat products have been very successful: I tasted the Greggs Vegan Sausage roll live on Loose Women on the first day it went on sale in January 2019 – and it didn’t taste bad, especially when smothered in brown HP -sauce. When Piers Morgan claimed it was disgusting and had made him sick, sales skyrocketed.

Greggs’ vegan roll has seen the company’s profits soar, and they managed to weather a downturn during the pandemic by launching the chicken-free Cajun roll and even a Southern Fried chicken-free Baguette. Non-meat disguised as the real stuff, hopping on a fashionable (and for Greggs, at least) profitable bandwagon.

The claim that vegan food is healthier than a meat-based diet is downright rotten – the Greggs sausage roll contains almost 9g of saturated fats, 44% of the healthy daily allowance – all in one product. And don’t expect something that is “fried” to score very differently.

As for saving the planet, all fake meat uses plant-based ingredients that require water, fertilizer, and heat to grow. Ingredients will have been brought in from other continents, which entails enormous energy costs.

It’s true that huge greenhouses in the UK are heated all year round to produce our insatiable craving for tomatoes, berries and lettuce, even in the winter months. The energy costs are terrible. Plant-based vegan food is no better.

Vegan food is often labeled as ‘sustainable’, but what exactly does that mean? A chicken from my local farm store or potatoes from a local village farmer’s market are all much more “sustainable” than a vegan sausage roll or a McPlant burger, and they cost less energy and air miles.

Saving the planet means saving agricultural jobs, saving small businesses, protecting the local landscape and helping your community. Fortunately, the message about eating less meat for health reasons is getting through to people, but we are certainly not going to give up.

Once again, the British public has proven themselves to be savvy shoppers. The big Vegan con is finally heading for the slop bucket.