Let Vegan Food Be Ugly
Who has time for aspirational smoothie bowls when all we need right now is comfort? Now is the time to embrace ugly food.
Vegan food often looks delicious online: our feeds fill up with healthy, brightly lit, visually pleasing dishes from an ever-growing number of influencers, food blogs and health advocates. But in times of crisis, and especially a global pandemic level of crisis, perfect plating and aspirational aesthetics feel extremely inessential. Where is the weird, ugly food that we actually turn to when we need comfort?
Now is the ugly food internet’s time to shine.
Far away from the perfectly iced cakes and healthy macro bowls of vegan influencer instagram, a corner of the internet exists just to appreciate and revel in sloppy, haphazard, chaotic plates of ugly vegan food. It’s where dedicated vegans share pictures of plates of vomitty beans, turdy lumps of hot dogs drowned in SpaghettiOs, unholy melted Teletubby cakes, and so very many phallic sausage creations, some oozing with gooey cheese.
‘When I first went vegan, I had nothing to relate to because I had no inspiration. I couldn’t afford the kind of meals that other people were eating.’
