If George Orwell were alive today, he would troll vegetarians. In The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), Orwell described with exasperation how mere mention of the words “Socialism” or “Communism” seemed to attract “every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.” Orwell suggested that even this list did not include the flakiest leftists of all. And prominent among that group were those who ate no meat, a diet that Orwell associated with dreamy political projects such as the garden city movement, now forgotten, but which once sought to create urban areas ringed by greenbelts. “If only the sandals and pistachio-coloured shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, teetotaller and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly!” Orwell was one of history’s greatest political writers, but on the subject of vegetarianism, he never got past stereotype. Anyone who has regularly eaten a meatless lunch in public knows that the image of vegetarians and vegans as members of …