British food magazine editor proposes articles on ‘killing vegans one by one’ after journalist pitches plant-based recipe ideas

Ms. Nelson, whose work has been published by HuffPost, Salon and Food Republic, had suggested a regular series on vegan cooking, featuring recipes, commentary and news.

CHRIS BAYNES: ‘The editor of Waitrose Food magazine “joked” about “killing vegans one by one” after a freelance writer pitched an idea about plant-based recipes. William Sitwell, who also appears as a critic on the BBC programme MasterChef, suggested journalist Selene Nelson pen a series of articles about force-feeding meat to vegans, whom he accused of “hypocrisy”. Ms Nelson said she had “never seen anything like it”. Waitrose admitted Mr Sitwell had “gone too far”. Ms Nelson, whose work has been published by HuffPost, Salon and Food Republic, had suggested a regular series on vegan cooking, featuring recipes, commentary and news.

In an emailed respond to her pitch last week, the magazine editor wrote: “Hi Selene. Thanks for this. How about a series on killing vegans, one by one. Ways to trap them? How to interrogate them properly? Expose their hypocrisy? Force-feed them meat? Make them eat steak and drink red wine?” Ms Nelson replied: “I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘exposing their hypocrisy’, but I’m certainly interested in exploring why just the mention of veganism seems to make some people so hostile. It sounds like you have some opinions on this?”…

Ms Nelson, who has been vegan for just over a year, said she “wasn’t telling [Mr Sitwell] to go vegan, or not eat meat, or that it’s bad to… I was just suggesting including some more plant-based recipes in the magazine,” she said… A spokesman for Waitrose said: “Even though this was a private email, William’s gone too far and his words are extremely inappropriate, insensitive and absolutely do not represent our views.” The upmarket supermarket launched a new vegan range earlier this month’. SOURCE…