I think it should be easy to find ingredient information, so in that I agree with the OP.
But the OP’s post sounds very much like the OP is expressing sour grapes that if he can’t have it (due to allergies), no one should and then tried to justify it by saying vegis are tastier and better anyway.
Just adding that a burger is a American tradition. Not it’s not a major one, but it is culturally ingrained to enjoy not only the burger but the burger dinning experience. This is the birth of fast food, eat with hands, no mess eating something that should be messy, simple and simply good food. Add a fake meat burger option allows more people to enjoy this.
Not only are individual ingredients hard to come by (WHICH vegetable juice is being used?), but “processing aids” are not required to be listed, even if these processing aids are made of the most common allergens.
Example: some natural food dyes are made from spirulina. Spirulina is dried by laying it up against a cornstarch-type product, which is indeed made of corn. Presumably, only a trace amount of the corn will remain on the spirulina after it’s dry. But who’s to say that wouldn’t be too much for someone allergic? Processing aids are not listed in ingredients and are therefore quite difficult to find out about. The average customer representative will have no idea about these processing aids. Often the food producer is unaware. You’d have to get this info from the spirulina manufacturer.
Frankly, if I were as highly allergic to common foods as the OP, I would NEVER take the risk of eating processed foods.
What I would NOT do is complain that these foods are being produced for OTHER people without those severe limitations.
It’s interesting you still see that. I live in Los Angeles, and I remember seeing that a lot in years past, but now the veggie items get devoured at the potlucks I attend. I brought a vegetarian enchilada dish to a holiday party this year and barely managed to snag some for myself, while someone else’s beautiful roast sat half-eaten. I do think there’s been a shift in attitudes, possibly more so in large cities, as well as in California and other coastal/blue states, but I hope it represents the tip of an iceberg.
I’ve seen on frozen food boxes a listing of allergens separate from the main ingredients list. Like this one “CONTAINS: WHEAT, MILK, SOY”. Companies today seem much more conscious of food allergies and are careful to note where there may be a problem, even where it may seem obvious. (Like on a package of peanuts: “CONTAINS NUTS”.)
They only do that with the seven most common allergens. Which is fine, if you happen to be allergic to any of those. But you can be allergic to things like strawberries or tomatoes or rye flour or really just about any food, not just the Big Seven and if your allergy(s) are outside the Big Seven then labeling is often more problematic.
Fine. EVERY POST where I talked about these I made it very clear they were wonderful things for people who could eat them, that I in no way want to restrict anyone else’s food choices, but you just go on not completely reading what I write.
Og forbid anyone ever complain about life-long restrictions on something everyone else gets to enjoy freely…:rolleyes:
I don’t have food allergies, but my son is peanut-allergic, and just that one allergy is enough to make us need to question everything. His allergist - 20 years back - suggested he be careful about tree nuts as well since so many people allergic to peanuts are also allergic to true nuts. I keep encouraging him to check into whether that is still an issue but he prefers to just avoid them.
Allergens can show up in very odd places, too. Years back, we had gone to Hershey Park as a day trip (it’s about 2.5 hours from home). We bought some unusual Kiss-shaped candies that they don’t see anywhere but their specialty stores. Gave some to the kids. They dozed on the way home.
When we got home, we happened to notice the ingredient list on the back of the one package. And the very last ingredient was peanuts. W. T. F. ?? It was a flavor that had nothing to do with peanuts (caramel or something). It wasn’t “may have come into contact with…” that we see all over the place. And it was so far down, it was below even artificial flavoring etc. on the list.
Dweezil was fine, but it gave us the shivers thinking he could have quietly suffocated while we thought he was sleeping. I comfort myself with the assumption that had he been made ill from it, he’d have at least gasped audibly or something. And later he had a true peanut exposure where “all” that happened was severe nausea until the offender, er, vacated the premises. Pretty sure we’d have noticed THAT!! Still, rather scary at the time.
I’ve never been one for substitutes for animal products. Meat is tasty. Fake meat is not. I love me a bowlful of veggie-based chili made with a variety of beans. I don’t love me a bowlful made with some fake meat product. Fake dairy is even worse. There are numerous brands of “cheese” that include casein as an ingredient, in fact it’s rare-to-impossible to find one that does NOT have that. It’s a dairy-based product. If you’re avoiding real cheese, it’s either due to a sensitivity / allergy (in which case casein might be dangerous), or because you want to avoid anything animal-based, in which case, casein would go against your principles.
I think the promotion of those “impossible” burgers (and things like soy hot dogs etc. in the past) is to allow people to eat foods similar to what others they’re with are eating, and also for places like BK to cater to vegetarians along with carnivores: they’re trying to broaden their potential customer base. But nowhere have I ever seen that those burgers are in any way healthier than the original dead cow variety.
A restaurant where we eat often has a tasty tomato soup labeled “vegetarian” on the menu. They put cheese on it. With no warning. Now, I’m wondering if it’s “fake” cheese. Ick. I don’t like it, either way.
Tomato soup with cheese on it would be entirely proper vegetarianism of the lacto-vegetarian variety. What it is not is “vegan”. As to the quality of the cheese used, that likely can only be determined by tasting it.
Yes, but am I shouting at them because I want them to change their habits or because I envy them their abilities to eat anything they want without giving a second thought to it?
And, even if I think someone is wrong that does not mean that I actually do want to change them, or that I would impinge upon their right to live their lives as they choose. If you don’t have the right to be wrong then you aren’t actually free.
I don’t think there are many people who won’t eat food that doesn’t contain meat other than a handful of trendy people trying a so-called carnivore diet. I think you’re confusing not wanting to eat a meal with no meat with not wanting to eat food with no meat. Humans are omnivores, after all (and remember that vegetarian is a choice, but omnivore is a biological classification.)
It is the big 8 and has been for quite a few years. I only say this to educate, not to discount what you are saying. Your anaphylactic reactions to so many vegetables are extremely uncommon and while I do appreciate the need for full disclosure on food labeling, I also understand the desire of companies for proprietary formulations. It’s a sticky wicket, and definitely difficult and frustrating for someone who is in your position who has so very many unusual severe allergies.
Concur - if a product is labelled ‘vegetarian’, I would expect that it might contain dairy, eggs, honey and possibly other animal-derived products that don’t kill the animal.
Only if it’s labelled vegan would I expect a complete absence of any animal products (as well as preparation methods that mitigate cross contamination.
I may have mentioned this, but I have found some success in asking the question thusly:
“I am extremely allergic to tomatoes. Can you tell me if your product X contains tomatoes in any form?” That way I’m not asking for the formula, just about the one item.
Of course, not every one will tell me yes or no - in which case I typically won’t even try it if I’m suspicious. Your loss of customer. Sometimes the product may contain multiple things I’m allergic to, in which case I’ll take a pass. I just don’t enjoy ambulance rides or time in a hospital.
For me, it;s sometimes a point of sale choice, rather than some prevailing ethic that shapes my whole life - I walk into Greggs (a high street bakery chain) and I have a choice:
I can buy this steak bake, which is delicious
or
I can buy this steak bake, which is also delicious (in fact it tastes exactly the same), except no animals needed to die.
It seems like it’s just an obvious choice to make on the spot right there.
Yeah. It would make my and many other people’s lives easier if they were no longer able to say “spices” instead of spelling out what exactly that means. I probably avoid dozens of foods I could actually eat if I knew which spices were in them.
I reckon a good way to do this would be an app - every product, say an item on a restaurant menu, could have a unique code. You tell your app the things you want to avoid, once, the app scans the code and looks up the minute detail of the ingredients from a dB.
It would require food manufacturers to populate the dB diligently, of course, and it couldn’t replace printed ingredients because of non app users…
There are also issues like far too many people who should know don’t know a fact like “casein” is a protein from milk and should not be consumed by people with a dairy allergy or intolerance. I would not want to rely on an app programmer to know that sort of thing for everything.
Maybe an app that actually lists every ingredient so I can scan the list.
there’s some fake meat items in this list of food evil MSN … according to eat this not that the some of the problems with fake meat is they have to put so much added fat in it to get the “meat” taste it negates the healthiness of it if there’s any to begin with and most of the “grains” are so stripped of any nutritional value you might as well eat the real thing