Highly Processed vegan food

Do you eat this?
such as a new vegan cheese brand featured in the bbc news today.

For decades we have been told to avoid processed foods for health reasons and in the UK we certainly comply more than eg USA.

There have been warnings about high levels of fats and salt in processed “plant based” food for a while yet they are all bar none marketed at younger/health conscious consumers, and in the interests of the planet.

i am not going to eat these fake foods and if one day I have to be vegan it will be whoolfood salads and beans on toast.

no

and it is not comforting when you hear the likes of Nestle salivating at the thought of getting rid of raw meat and veg from the consumer aisles and replacing them with nespresso style 'healthy plant based meal packets' 

Good. Quite apart from over-milking, the amount of methane given of by billions of cows is literally suffocating us. 

I can't remember the last time I drank actual milk. 

OP - Very much so, the amount of additives and gunk that they must put in these ultra-processed things leaves me a tad queasy.

I fear 3Dux is being led astray by siren voices from Big Food.

 

 

I raised the same point the other day. I understand the goals of meat and dairy reduction and I think some of the new stuff tastes quite good but it does go against decades of messaging about processed food.

People who choose a gluten-free diet because they think it's healthier, and not for a medically diagnosis of coeliac / genuine intolerance, are total fooking morons. 

Like saying ooh, some people get a sore tummy from the acidity in oranges so I'm going to stop eating oranges and instead drink 2l of Fanta a day. 

It's great being vegan and knowing that you can also be catered for if you want junk food too. But yeah, you still need to read the ingredients/nutritional information too and can't just assume that because it's vegan it's "healthy".

Being vegan just means you aren't exploiting/killing animals - it doesn't automatically mean you are a health freak. 

Also vegan supermarket cheese is awful and I avoid it. The exception is the 'Fauxmagerie' in Shoreditch (also online, and soon to be in Waitrose) which has incredible vegan cheese and is as unlike the coconut-oil based rubbish as it's possible to get. 

It's still not "healthy", inasmuch as it's a treat.

3-ducks17 Nov 22 09:09

I literally don't care. Over farming is bad for the planet. 

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Grass fed beef is a net carbon sink and cow shitt nourishing the earth is better than the bee slaying chemical death that deluges the former rainforest now soya plantations 

What is in a vegan sausage roll?

Does anyone have a vegan sausage roll recipe which is as good as the real thing?

I'd like to make some at Christmas but my sister in law is Muslim and doesn't eat pork.

The fact that people are falling highly processed 'fake' meat being good for you or diets based on air freighted food being good for the environment is a failure of our education system.

The easiest, cheapest and healthiest meat replacements are tofu, seitan or jackfruit - which are all cheap and contain no additives. Cook them properly and add some seasoning. Supermarkets/brands might be making other more marketable versions which do contain additives, in which case the simple answer is to eat them in moderation.

Also meat replacements range widely in terms of their additives and salt/fat content - shop around and compare them.

 

it strikes me more generally that aping meat products is not the way for veganism to go - if you want to live on vegetables fruit pulses and grain do that, its weird to turn it into fake animal product.  I would find eating a dog distasteful so would not want food disguised as such.

Grass fed beef is a net carbon sink and cow shitt nourishing the earth is better than the bee slaying chemical death that deluges the former rainforest now soya plantations 

Only if you ignore the fact that everywhere that cows graze was once forest. 

I had vegan "bolognese" for dinner tonight.  Comes dehydrated in a packet.  Soy-based.  The texture is quite convincing.

Actually, it's not bad once you re-hydrate it with real beef stock, add some vegetables and guanciale, and serve with parmesan.

 

Crouchback - you've answered your own point. Not everyone who is vegan for ethical/health/environmental reasons wants to "live on vegetables fruit pulses and grain".

When I eat vegan chicken in a stir fry I'm not thinking "ah this takes me back to the taste of murdered poultry", I'm just enjoying a meal. Vegan meats allow you to replicate the recipes most people are familiar with, as well as being high in protein and giving you the "chewy" texture which is often nice as a contrast within a meal. It's a multi-billion dollar industry ($7.5bn 2021), so it clearly works.

Purely vegetarian restaurants are usually very good. The offerings in non vegetarian restaurants for vegetarian/plant based are often trying to please everyone bland. 

You can avoid the processed vegan stuff by just having a more plant based diet that doesn't involve so much processed stuff, rather than trying to find vegan replacements for the non-vegan stuff you like. 

Re gluten-free there's a great insta account and book called The Loop Whisk. The writer was doing a PhD in chemistry and is a keen baker so she started experimenting with different flour types and thickening agents to allow you to get the same texture/mouth feel as gluten based baked goods. I'm not gluten intolerant but I did try her recipes to see if she got it right and she has.

take your point Guybrush.  While I do eat meat, my guess is that human society only has another 50-100 years to go of farming animals before it becomes seen as a barbaric practice much as we see slavery now.