Sir Paul McCartney enjoys vegan nuggets on Chicken Shop Date with Amelia Dimoldenberg 51 years after turning vegetarian

by

Paul McCartney ate vegan nuggets and fries while on this week’s episode of the web series ‘Chicken Shop Date’ with Amelia Dimoldenberg.

Paul McCartney, 83, has been a vegetarian for over 50 years, since deciding to follow the diet in 1975.

Amelia ensured vegan nuggets were available for the musician’s first appearance on her show.

She playfully hinted at her upcoming date with Paul McCartney, joking, ‘Money can’t buy love, but it can buy vegan nuggets and chips!’ The full story comes out this Friday.

Paul McCartney became a vegetarian after a moment of realization: he was eating lamb chops while looking at sheep playing in the fields outside his window. His late wife, Linda, joined him in adopting a vegetarian lifestyle.

He recalled admiring the couple’s appearance before realizing they were all eating leg of lamb, as he shared in his Weekend Magazine column.

It began when we ate one of the small creatures we saw happily moving around outdoors. That single act changed everything for us and marked the beginning of our journey.

For Linda, choosing to be vegetarian wasn’t just a diet—it was driven by her care and compassion for animals.

She loved all animals, even the ones most people found unpleasant, like small frogs. We both had a deep and shared love for the natural world.

‘Our children were all quite young at the time, but we sat them down and talked about it. 

Our daughter, Mary, recalls Linda and me telling her we stopped eating meat because we didn’t want to cause any animal suffering for our meals.

We let our children know they didn’t need to give up meat if they didn’t want to, but we decided to stop cooking it in our house. Surprisingly, everyone was okay with it – there were no hard feelings.

Everyone found it easy. We did have a small problem later, though, while we were on vacation in the Caribbean at a barbecue.

The children noticed the chicken and asked if they could eat it. We told them yes, but reminded them it was the same kind of birds they see in our backyard.

The chicken they ate wasn’t good, which turned out to be a fortunate thing. As a result, the whole family – including generations that followed – became vegetarian.

Linda McCartney, who sadly passed away from breast cancer in 1998, was a passionate vegetarian. In 1991, she started her own successful line of vegetarian and vegan food products.

As a lifestyle expert, I’ve been following a really interesting development in the food world. Back in 2025, there was a debate about whether companies like mine could continue calling products like plant-based patties ‘burgers’ and ‘sausages.’ Basically, the question was whether those terms should be reserved for meat-based items only. It was a big discussion about how we describe food and what consumers expect!

Paul, along with other family members, participated in the protests against the decision.

He explained to The Sunday Times that simply labeling burgers and sausages as “plant-based,” “vegetarian,” or “vegan” should be clear enough for consumers to know what’s in their food.

‘This also encourages attitudes essential to our health and that of the planet.’

  • Sign up for our Spotlight newsletter, direct from our Showbiz expert Katie Hind – and we’ll also send you an eye-opening exclusive article revealing the 20 rudest celebrities she’s ever met. Get it HERE

Read More

2026-05-28 21:48