I, for one, welcome the vegans into polite society (so long as they're willing to shut up about veganism once in a while).

Making vegetables taste good takes a lot more practice and skill than making meat taste good (grog apply fire!). And, inevitably, these culinary breakthroughs will be stolen by us meat-eaters to make meaty dishes better.

So, next time you see a vegan, thank them for subjecting themselves to awful food for the rest of their lives just so you can occasionally learn things like "portobello mushrooms taste great between ground-up cow flesh and lard-fried pig-belly".