It's time for a change

Back in October of 2011, I became vegetarian, and I haven't looked back since. Cutting out meat products was actually pretty easy (or so I thought), as there are such great and easily accessible alternatives such as Quorn and tofu available nowadays. However, as I started to delve deeper and research more, I realised that there are lots of seemingly vegetarian products that actually contain animal derivatives. So, in August 2012, I created Veggie Kid's Blog to expose these false friends which seem vegetarian, but, in fact, are not. I posted on and off for four years and then left the website to collect dust for three years and four months. A lot happened in that three years and four months and one of the biggest changes in my life was that I became an adult and I started studying at university, so I felt like the name Veggie Kid's Blog no longer fit. So, in April of this year (2020), I rebranded the blog to Veggie Student's Blog. A few posts later, and that brings us up to today. This blog has been a part of my life (on and off) for eight years now and has seen many changes, but a very significant change has happened in my life recently that is very relevant to this blog; I became vegan. This not only makes my job more interesting now, but also harder. Sussing out products with secret meat is hard enough, but sussing out products with secret animal derivatives of any sort will be harder, but I'm looking forward to the challenge. I'll be documenting my journey from vegetarianism into veganism on this blog and will share with you any discoveries that I make. I'm looking forward to what this next chapter holds for this blog, and I hope you are too.

Dolmio's Pasta Bake Sauces

Now, the other day, my sister made a delicious-looking pasta bake, using Dolmio's Creamy Tomato Sauce for Pasta Bake. Upon inspection of the jar, though, I noticed that it didn't say whether or not it was suitable for vegetarians. I saw that we had some different Dolmio sauces in the cupboard, which did say 'suitable for vegetarians' on them, so I assumed that the reason for this lack of labelling was because the creamy pasta bake sauce was not suitable for vegetarians; I emailed Dolmio to find out why this is. Now, I had to email them twice in order to gain this information. The first time, they merely replied by telling me that all of their vegetarian products are labelled as so on the packaging, which I guess is useful information, but definitely avoided answering the actual question I had asked. The second time I contacted them (with slightly more direct wording), they gave me a straightforward answer. They revealed that the reason for some of their sauces not being suitable for vegetarians is because they use milk protein that comes from animal rennet to form the creamy base of some of their sauces. It seems a recurring theme that companies process their whey and milk protein in a way that uses animal rennet, when there are obviously vegetarian alternatives! It really annoys me when there are simple changes that could be made to open their product out to a vegetarian market that are just being ignored!

Wall's Ice Cream

Now, it was my brother's birthday the other day, and since he's not the biggest fan of cake, we got him a Viennetta instead. I noticed that it didn't say if it was vegetarian or not on the box, and so decided to have a look on the Wall's website. Worryingly, under its 'vegetarian' section of products, it only lists Calippo Orange and Calippo Lemon-Lime. Given the number of products that Wall's produce, I didn't believe that these could be the only products that are vegetarian, and so decided to email them. Now, they did confirm Viennetta and a number of their other products are not suitable for vegetarians, but, similarly to United Biscuits, their email ended with "This email and any attachments may contain information that is confidential and privileged... You should not copy it or use it for any purpose nor disclose or distribute its contents to any other person." Not wanting to get in a legal battle with Wall's, I shan't disclose here why so many of their products are not suitable for vegetarians. However, I will say this; their ice creams contain whey powder, which is a by-product of the cheese industry. To find out why this relation to the cheese industry may cause their products to not be suitable for vegetarians, check out this old post of mine on non-vegetarian cheeses. Something else that they included in the email, that I didn't ask for, but was greatly appreciative of, was their list of all their products that are suitable for vegetarians (as of April 2020). Now, obviously, this may change over time, but I don't feel so guilty disclosing this information on the internet, since I've seen many websites which do a similar thing of posting companies' vegetarian lists.

The list of their products that are suitable for vegetarians (as of April 2020) is as follows:

• Solero Organic Lemon, Solero Organic Peach
• Magnum Classic Pint, Magnum Almond Pint, Magnum Praline Pint, Magnum Dark Raspberry Pint, Magnum Vegan Classic, Magnum Vegan Almond, Magnum Double Salted Caramel, Magnum Double Dark Chocolate & Raspberry, Magnum White Chocolate & Cookies
• Cornetto Gluten Free & Vegan, Cornetto Mint, Cornetto Classico, Cornetto Strawberry, Cornetto Chocolate, Cornetto Vegan
• Carte D'Or Les Classiques: Coffee, Carte D'Or Rum & Raisin, Carte D'Or Les Classiques: Mint Chocolate, Carte D'Or Organic Vanilla, Carte D'Or Organic Chocolate, Carte D'Or Organic Pistachio, Carte D'Or Organic Columbian Coffee, Carte D'Or Les Classiques: Honeycomb

Interestingly, this doesn't include the Calippos that are listed as their only vegetarian products on their website!
Anyway, hope this helps!

Mini Cheddars

So, a while back, I noticed that, whilst it says on Cheeselets' packaging that they're suitable for vegetarians, it doesn't say the same on Mini Cheddars'. Since both products are made by United Biscuits, I presumed that the only explanation for this was that Mini Cheddars are not suitable for vegetarians. A quick look at the ingredients, though, did not reveal anything obviously not vegetarian-friendly, so I decided to email United Biscuits, asking if they are in fact not suitable for vegetarians and asking, if this is true, why it is true. Their reply confirmed that they are, in fact, not suitable for vegetarians, and they did provide a reason as to why this is, but, at the bottom of the email it said that "This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and solely for the use of the intended recipient. They may contain material protected by legal professional or other privilege." Not wanting to get sued by United Biscuits, I shan't say here why they're not suitable for vegetarians, but if you look at my old post on cheese, then I'll leave you to put the puzzle pieces together for yourself.

Burger King's Rebel Whopper

Hey! It's been a while since I've posted on here (3 years and 4 months to be exact), but with this lockdown not looking like it'll end anytime soon, I decided to hop back on the blog! If you're an OG fan, you'll have noticed that I've rebranded; Veggie Kid has now become Veggie Student. The passage of time, man... weird. Anyway, something else that compelled me to post on here is a story I read that I thought wouldn't look out of place on my blog, and reminded me about this odd corner of the internet.

If you've opened your eyes recently, it's likely that you've seen an advert for Burger King's 'Rebel Whopper'; a brand new burger, which they marketed as '100% plant based'. The multinational fast food chain has recently been prevented from advertising the burger as so, since it is cooked on the same grill as their meat burgers! To add insult to injury, they also launched the 'veggie' burger coinciding with Veganuary, whilst the burger definitely isn't vegan, since it has mayonnaise in it, which contains eggs. Although they didn't explicitly make the link between Veganuary and this burger, they were pretty much handing you a pen and asking you to connect the dots. It's only in the small print of their adverts that they admitted to cooking the burgers on the same grill as their meat burgers (I've attached a picture to the right - you can barely see it!), and who bothers to read small print? We've probably all sold our soul to three different companies without even realising it! To be honest, this is why I avoid fast food veggie options in general, since the product may well be vegetarian, but the way in which it is cooked may make it not.

M&Ms

Now, a while back I talked about Skittles not being vegetarian before 2009. Although Mars did manage to rectify this problem and make Skittles vegetarian they did not make the same changes to some of their other products such as M&Ms. M&Ms contain E120 (otherwise known as carmine) which is derived by boiling scale insects. Mars have tried to conceal what it actually is by labelling it 'E120' although it is actually boiled beetles!

Photo credits:
https://www.ohnuts.com/buy.cfm/bulk-candy/chocolate-buttons-lentils/m-ms-my-color-candies/assorted-rainbow-ms-milk

Polo Fruits

I just want to start off by saying that I'm not 100% sure about this one. However, I have rummaged through the bottomless pit that is the internet and have tried to put the jigsaw pieces together. So, I was looking at Nestlé's vegetarian list updated Au

gust 2016 when I noticed something rather odd. Fruit Polos weren't included in the list of what is vegetarian. Curious... I then tried to find out if anyone else had found out why they're not vegetarian. There was no-one who had said why they're not vegetarian online. However, many had said that they are not vegetarian. So, I resorted to Googling what the ingredients were in Fruit Polos. The only thing that could possibly not be vegetarian was beta carotene. This was when I stumbled upon this 'Vegetarian Factsheet' where it listed E-Numbers that weren't vegetarian. One of them was E160a (ii), otherwise known as beta carotene. Although this made sense, I was rather confused, as I had consumed products with beta carotene before that said 'Suitable for Vegetarians' on them. So, I did some digging and discovered that beta carotene is, in itself, vegetarian, however, it can be stabilised with gelatine. Finally, all the puzzle pieces fitted. However, there is one hole in my theory. That is that Ocado lists the product as 'Suitable for Vegetarians'. They could, of course, have just assumed this and be wrong, likewise, I could be wrong. Anyway, just thought I'd share that with you! Bye!

Sources:

http://www.nestle.co.uk/asset-library/documents/nutritionhealthwellness/vegetarian%20list.pdf

http://www.shreeswaminarayan.org.uk/downloads/vegesheet.pdf

http://www.vrg.org/blog/2012/02/15/beta-carotene-in-us-beverages-not-stabilized-with-gelatin-unlike-some-products-in-the-uk/