Imported Vegan Food Not Vegan

[Miso Vegan]

Somehow I doubt it....

[veganshawn]

It really sucks, but I hope it motivates more people to cook their own food and make things from scratch.

[bekah-chan]

+1 to veganshawn. good point.

[Chijou_no_seiza]

ugh, I am very grossed out.


One of my favorite vegan restaurants, Wheel of Life in OC, serves thai and chinese food has always had this notice on their menu for (at least) the past 4 years:

Originally Posted by http://www.wheelofliferestaurant.com/about.htm

"Most of our soy meats are specially made from our own recipe to assure the best ingredients and no animal products are used."

I always wondered why they said that. I always assumed they were just trying to assure people that it was vegan because the texture was unlike any other mock meat I've tried.

It seems they knew something about asian labeling that we didn't.

[gur]

this totally bites. the only vegan restaurant (and my favourite) in town is indonesian with mostly mock meat dishes. (and the other mostly vegan restaurant is chinese).

sigh.

[lullured]

There is a vegetarian Chinese restaurant that we go to once in a while, where the label includes milk on some of the products (they have a freezer if you want to buy some mock meat, and we checked all the labels). So, would it be very unsafe to assume that if the label doesn't include milk then the product is vegan? I'm pretty sure that the people that run the restaurant are able to read the original labels, but if the original labels are not complete it doesn't help much of course

[Ariann]

It doesn't seem clear to me at all from the quarrygirl blog post that all of the troublesome products actually have dairy or eggs as ingredients, rather than being contaminated at some point in the processing. I wonder how all of the perfectly vegan American products "manufactured on shared equipment" would compare in a similar analysis.

[La Végétalienne]

Originally Posted by beforewisdom

"Vegan" restaurants in LA found to have meat, dairy, and eggs in the food:
http://www.quarrygirl.com/2009/06/28...n-restaurants/

I emailed that article to a friend of mine and he replied with a link to this blog post:

Keep Stepping

By Eccentric Vegan on July 1st, 2009

According to Martin Luther King, Jr. (in The Letter from Birmingham Jail) there are four steps of nonviolent activism:

“In any nonviolent campaign, there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustice exists; negotiations; self-purification; and direct action.”

I think some vegans are just a little too caught up on step three and not concerned enough with step four.

Or, as Erik Marcus wrote:

“just twenty minutes devoted to [vegan] leafletting outweighs the effects of a lifetime of eating at questionably vegan restaurants.”

Source.

Thoughts?

[veganshawn]

Originally Posted by lullured

There is a vegetarian Chinese restaurant that we go to once in a while, where the label includes milk on some of the products (they have a freezer if you want to buy some mock meat, and we checked all the labels). So, would it be very unsafe to assume that if the label doesn't include milk then the product is vegan? I'm pretty sure that the people that run the restaurant are able to read the original labels, but if the original labels are not complete it doesn't help much of course

If it is made in Twain, eat at your own risk.

[veganshawn]

Originally Posted by La Végétalienne

I emailed that article to a friend of mine and he replied with a link to this blog post:

Source.

Thoughts?

I think that blog response is lame, if I buy something that is labeled as vegan I should expect it to be vegan. Would the person who wrote the blog say the same thing to someone who is afflicted with a serious food allergy?

[Dandelion]

Originally Posted by La Végétalienne

I emailed that article to a friend of mine and he replied with a link to this blog post:

Source.

Thoughts?

Not sure exactly what exactly you're asking thoughts about but i have a few:

1) Anytime I eat at a restaurant I assume that I will be eating animal products. Having been around that industry enough, I know better. But that doesn't matter to me. My established intention of a vegan meal gets the point across. This is why it's important to represent and say (if needed) "vegan" instead of "strict-vegetarian" or "I'm allergic". Granted I will do my best to make sure it is completely vegan but realistically if it's outta my sight I'm relying on faith. I think I'm starting to realize though, the front line is NOT in the restaurants.

2) Taking a restaurant to task for serving animal products when they promise otherwise is not a futile effort of inane purification. It is striving for integrity which everybody should should adopt by default. I applaud the efforts of quarrygirl.com to hold these restaurateurs to their promise.

3) Worrying about a modicum of animal ingredients is one thing but striving for justice is never time wasted. I'll be the first asshole to buck against obsessive ingredient vegan policing but this is not one of those cases. Spending time trying to tease out what molecule touched what molecule as is the case for booze (barnivore.com) or sugar as examples seems hopelessly fruitless to me and misses the point. Justice, though is just cause under any roof and Marcus's dig in there is distasteful under such pretenses.

In any case this is a good conversation to have. BoingBoing even picked up this story for chrissakes! How many minutes of leafletting is THAT worth?!

[La Végétalienne]

I was looking for thoughts on the blog post. I'll post mine later- late for work, eep!

[tin can]

Originally Posted by La Végétalienne

eep!

This always reminds me of the alert sound when I (well, my family) had a Mac in the late 80s/early 90s.

[Mahk]

I have a few questions for this anonymous blogger "quarrygirl":

These food analysis test sticks you used, what is their accuracy?

How sensitive are they, ie what ppm level do they respond to?

How do we know this is not simply "made in a facility that also makes milk products" molecular cross contamination? [as Ariann pointed out earlier]

Are they prone to false positives from proteins similar to the target?

Did each food get tested more than once?

Are you a qualified professional in the food science and analysis industry or just a nobody without any training?

Why all the OCD detail about your technique yet you don't even tell us the brand of these test sticks? Are we just supposed to take it on faith that they are bullet proof, just like over-the-counter EPT tests are?

Did you have any preconceived notions that Green Leaves Vegan secretly used casein based cheese beforehand? [see her response comment made March 16th, 2009 10:31 AM from a different blog.] We also learn from this blog that one can test to see if a substance contains casein based on whether it can stretch. I did not know that.

Good thing you wore rubber gloves when you were touching the food to prepare it. What brand rubber gloves did you use?

Why are we blaming the restaurants and not their suppliers? The cross contamination would more likely have occurred there if you ask me.

Who are you?

[Kat]

this post makes me love mahk. ^