The new narcissism

My friend recently met a man on a dating app and went out for dinner with him. When he arrived, the man announced that he didn’t drink. Nothing unusual about that: plenty of young men are abstemious these days. His next declaration was more surprising: he didn’t eat. Instead, he lived off something called ‘Huel’.

Huel — an abbreviation of ‘human fuel’ — is a type of powdered food made of oats, peas, flax and rice. I’ve tried it and it is disgusting — gruel, essentially, in smart packaging. But it’s hugely popular: Huel is now one of the fastest growing companies in Britain. Huel is low in fat and high on principle. ‘We live in difficult times,’ says its evangelical marketing bumf. Meat is ‘inefficient, unsustainable and can be inhumane’. The world’s population is growing and ‘if everyone ate a western diet, we’d be in even bigger trouble’. Huel ‘offers a solution’.

The Huel fad taps into a deeper phenomenon among men of my generation, a new sort of narcissism. Young men are increasingly obsessed with self-discipline and self-improvement and the self all round. Vanity is as old as humanity, of course, as is self-restraint. But the new narcissism is about being vain and virtuous at the same time.

Young men are drinking less alcohol, smoking less and, oddly, having less sex, perhaps because sex involves focusing on someone else. Traditional masculine pursuits are being abandoned in favour of more ethical ones. Pubs are closing down and gyms are opening up. ‘Fitness’ and ‘wellness’ are the buzzwords, and personal trainers are the new gurus, encouraging their diligent clients to be in good shape for their #gymselfies.

It used to be women who were battered with dieting advice and who were flogged endless piles of self-help books. A few years ago, ‘clean eating’ was in vogue.