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The mung bean munchers have finally found their mojo. While vegans have always been hailed for their discipline and principles, sex appeal has never really been their preserve. Forgoing animal products has been written off as too worthy, too joyless, too Guardian-reader with bad shoes and a smug sense of superiority. And salad seems limp next to the suggestive sausage, the dribbling-down-the-chin burger or the irresistible scent of frying bacon. Carnal thoughts were reserved for us carnivores.

Until now. Because veganism is hot. Precisely 42 degrees hot. At Nama in Notting Hill, none of the vegan dishes is cooked beyond that temperature in order to prevent vitamins and enzymes being destroyed. On a Thursday lunchtime, the clientele are chic in Isabel Marant jumpers and Saint Laurent ankle boots. The woman at the next table is carrying her German Spitz puppy in a Chloé handbag, while our waitress is a wannabe-actress who looks nauseatingly healthy and confesses that her guilty pleasure is a sliver of cheese. The menu is peppered with inverted commas: the ‘pasta’ is spiralised courgette and the ‘nut cheese’ is made with kohlrabi, mushroom and spinach. Everyone’s drinking green goo.

So what’s sparked this London table revolution? Is it a response to the flesh obsession of recent years? After the paleo diet, the capital’s burgerisation and the trend for dirty food à la Meat Liquor, the inevitable equal and opposite reaction is to reach for quinoa and black beans. Or rather, ‘roasted butternut squash and sun-blushed tomato lasagne with wilted spinach, roasted pepper and sage’. That’s what the acting establishment were offered on the special vegan option menu at this year’s BAFTAs.

Hot veganism - in pictures 8 show all Hot veganism - in pictures 1/8 Beyonce Tried veganism in 2013. Has now launched a vegan meal delivery service in US 2/8 Jessica Chastain Six years a vegan, she recently converted her mother who is now a vegan cook 3/8 Joaquin Phoenix The strict vegan and animal rights advocate wore vegan sandals for his role in Gladiator 4/8 Stella McCartney A lifelong vegetarian, she uses no leather or fur in her collections 5/8 Deliciously healthy Ella Woodward started her blog after going vegan to help a treat a rare disease 6/8 Go vegan at Spring Roasted onion squash with white beans and rainbow kale, £16, is on the menu at Sky Gyngell's new restaurant at Somerset House 7/8 Get your greens at Amico Bio Spinach spaghetti with rice milk mozzarisella and herb pesto, £10.50, at Amico Bio 8/8 Kakiage Udon at Itadaki Zen Vegan Japanese Noodles served with Kakiage tempura, £7 1/8 Beyonce Tried veganism in 2013. Has now launched a vegan meal delivery service in US 2/8 Jessica Chastain Six years a vegan, she recently converted her mother who is now a vegan cook 3/8 Joaquin Phoenix The strict vegan and animal rights advocate wore vegan sandals for his role in Gladiator 4/8 Stella McCartney A lifelong vegetarian, she uses no leather or fur in her collections 5/8 Deliciously healthy Ella Woodward started her blog after going vegan to help a treat a rare disease 6/8 Go vegan at Spring Roasted onion squash with white beans and rainbow kale, £16, is on the menu at Sky Gyngell's new restaurant at Somerset House 7/8 Get your greens at Amico Bio Spinach spaghetti with rice milk mozzarisella and herb pesto, £10.50, at Amico Bio 8/8 Kakiage Udon at Itadaki Zen Vegan Japanese Noodles served with Kakiage tempura, £7

In the past, veganism has often come across as a celebrity eccentricity, an edible Scientology. Now, though, the stars have helped to normalise it. This shift started with Beyoncé, who has managed to do what PETA has been desperately trying to achieve for years: to sex up plant-pulping and kale. The singer, along with her husband Jay-Z, tried veganism for three weeks in 2013. Now she has launched a meal delivery service with her trainer, Marco Borges, allowing US fans to eat like their idol for one, two or three meals a day. The 22-day plan uses only plant-based ingredients. No meat, no dairy, no soy and no gluten.

The vegan way is attracting more civilians, too. Back in 2006, the Vegan Society estimated that there were 150,000 vegans in the UK. Its chief executive, Jasmijn de Boo, believes the number has since doubled, though there are no exact figures. She also highlights the Society’s growing social media following (it now has 235,000 Facebook fans) and increasing demand for vegan products, such as non-dairy margarine. A 2014 Mintel report showed that the market for non-dairy drinks almost tripled from 36m litres in 2011 to 92m litres two years later. Meanwhile, the spiraliser, which makes thin pasta-like ribbons of vegetables, is the kitchen gadget on every foodie’s lust list, and its ‘courgetti’ appear on the front of every hot new cookery book.

‘Celebrities have been a big factor in publicising veganism and making it more popular,’ says de Boo. ‘A shift in the media culture has also played a big part: whereas a few years ago, the media may not have been so favourable, now you see a lot of positive stories.’

There are also a growing number of vegan hangouts. The Waiting Room is a vegetarian and vegan-friendly café in Deptford; devotees rave about its vegan burgers, which come dripping in fiery Deptford Death Sauce (a secret recipe made with habañero peppers) and its vegan cupcakes. This being Deptford, its owners also run the tattoo parlour next door, Kids Love Ink. There’s the afore-mentioned Nama in Notting Hill. Then there are institutions, such as Bethnal Green’s Gallery Café. Run by the local charity St Margaret’s House Settlement, its vegan pizzas are reportedly the best. Meanwhile, Londoners are awaiting the arrival of Veganz, a German supermarket chain that stocks 6,000 vegan products. It’s due to open here at the end of the year.

Even omnivores are getting veg-azzled for short spells. On top of Meat Free Mondays (advocated by Paul McCartney, who was widely mocked for rapping about it in an excruciating video last year), the end of this month marks the UK’s first ever Meat Free Week (23-29 March). On 16 March, there’s a five-course feast to mark its launch at Grain Store, the King’s Cross restaurant where vegetables get top billing. Three of the capital’s hottest chefs will be in the kitchen: L’Anima’s Francesco Mazzei, José Pizarro of Pizarro and Bruno Loubet, the chef patron at Grain Store.

Meanwhile, Brighton is playing host to VegfestUK for the ‘meat-reducing, vegan curious and veggie curious’. It features a hemp expo, a teen vegan zone and the UK’s first vegan comedy festival. One of the stand-ups performing, Balham’s Jim Daly, was recruited on the strength of his ‘veggie (w)rap’, the part of his set where he raps about forgoing meat: ‘It’s a hard life being a gangsta vegetarian/ people think the only organs you have are ovarian/but I’ve got two tomatoes and an aubergine/it’s the biggest vegetable that you’ve ever seen.’ ‘There’s loads of vegetarian and vegan comedians,’ says Daly. ‘More than you’d think. Sara Pascoe’s probably the most famous. There’s the old adage: “How do you spot a vegan? They’ll tell you,” but it’s not the case. People only tell me after they hear me say I’m one.’

According to ES food columnist Rachel Khoo, veganism is coming out of its niche. ‘You know it’s gone mainstream when you go into Pret and M&S and they’re offering bean wraps and everything is marked with the vegan sign,’ says Khoo, whose new cookbook, Rachel Khoo’s Kitchen Notebook, was published last month. ‘It’s not just trendy places but high-street shops.’ An ambassador for Meat Free Week, Khoo describes herself as a ‘flexitarian’: she’ll eat the odd steak, as long as it’s well-sourced, but is ‘happy with just vegetables’.

‘Veganism is definitely becoming more fashionable,’ she says. ‘In my group of friends, even meat-eaters don’t complain when faced with just vegetables at a dinner party — it’s become much more acceptable. Look at the way food magazines treat vegan dishes and what’s on offer in restaurants: it’s no longer a big deal that it’s vegan — now it is just a beautiful plate of vegetables.’ She recalls a recent dinner party where she was asked to bring a vegan pudding — no eggs, no butter, no cream. ‘I did a vegan chocolate cake using black beans — you get a really dense, fudgy cake. But I would only do that if a vegan were coming to dinner, because eggs and butter make everything better.’

The publishing industry has been swift to pick up on this growing interest in vegan cooking, with Ella Woodward, whose Deliciously Ella blog gets 2.5m hits a month. She has become a poster-girl for meat-free cooking, with her recipe book, also called Deliciously Ella, published in January. With her glossy hair and perfect wardrobe, she looks a world away from the hemp-wearing, ethnic skirt brigade. Woodward, 23, adopted a vegan diet after she was diagnosed with a chronic illness, postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS), which left her exhausted, with heart palpitations and pins and needles in her limbs. She became desperate to try anything to alleviate her symptoms. ‘Within a few weeks, I noticed a difference and saw big improvements in my skin.’

Although she pursues a largely vegan diet, Woodward does eat honey and says she ‘doesn’t love’ the word vegan, ‘mostly because it doesn’t always equate to eating well — you can be vegan and still eat a lot of refined food. I prefer to see it as a natural, plant-based diet: fruit and vegetables and grains. I would never want the way I eat to feel exclusive; people can add feta or chicken to my recipes. I wouldn’t put a label on it because I’d eat a piece of fish while travelling if that was the best option, although that happens rarely.’

She puts plants at the forefront of her recipes for health reasons. ‘We all know we should get five a day — one of my main aims is to encourage people not to choose peas or broccoli because they feel safe, but to try beetroot or celeriac. I used to be quite nervous of them — beetroot is quite intimidating! You get it in a restaurant, but people don’t think it is something for a Monday dinner at home.’

So how much is this rise in veganism down to concerns over health, and how much about animal welfare and the environment? ‘People are both concerned about what is in their food and cruelty towards animals,’ says de Boo. ‘They see those undercover stories about meat production and abattoirs, and decide to break that cycle. That’s still the majority of vegan people in the UK, but in the US, it’s more health-related. Those converting for health reasons are growing over here — then they find out more about what’s going on in farming, and may become an ethical vegan.’

De Boo believes people are so detached from where their food comes from that they don’t realise what industrial milk production is really like. ‘Dairy is the next battle,’ she adds. ‘We’ve convinced a lot of people that the meat industry isn’t ethical, but people don’t realise that cows are killed in milk production and that they can be unhealthy because of milk yields. Cows... don’t show fear or distress until it’s really bad — but they are distressed.’

Vegans are slimmer on average, and less likely to develop diabetes. However, they have to ensure they eat wisely (or take supplements) to avoid being deficient in vitamins such as B12, and in calcium and iron. If their interest in cutting out meat is for health reasons, adherents are more likely to have a flexible approach to veganism. ‘There are a lot of people trying to cut down on their meat and dairy consumption, rather than axing them altogether,’ says Woodward.

‘Right now there’s a conscious movement towards not eating meat or dairy at every meal. Then you come across things that may convince you of the ethical case, too. Cows aren’t trotting around in a field in the idyllic manner we have in our minds. I do it for health reasons, but ethics are something I feel strongly about, so if I ever went back to eating meat, I would be conscious of where that meat came from.’

So is veganism the future or just a fad? Crystal ball-gazers say the former. Alvin Roth, an economist with a Nobel Prize and professorships at both Stanford and Harvard, has argued that veganism will become the norm in the near future, with meat consumption becoming ‘repugnant’ to the general population. Currently, many of us experience cognitive dissonance when it comes to what we eat: we may think that killing animals is cruel and unnecessary, yet veganism feels too difficult, and the whiff of sizzling bacon plays the Devil in the wilderness, tempting us. Maybe if we follow Beyoncé’s lead, vegans will end up running the world.

Portrait by Ian Derry, styled by Sophie Paxton. Top, POA, Erdem at Selfridges (selfridges.com). Hair by Terri Capon at Factory using Leonor Greyl. Make-up by Philippe Miletto using Dior Spring 2015 Kingdom of Colors. Stylist’s assistant: Rosie Arkell-Palmer. Model: Aisha at Models 1