Vegans can only eat food that doesn’t come from animals, but when travelling, especially to places far away from home, I imagine that in some cultures, it may be hard to find completely non-animal-related dishes. So do vegans run into diet-related troubles/issues while travelling?
Any anecdotes welcome - yours or your family/friends’.
Holy Cow, yes. I am not remotely a vegan, but a vegan friend met up with us in Istanbul a few months ago, and it was a huge PITA and really limited where we could eat. I think generally Turkey is a fairly easy place to eat vegetarian, but vegan is another story - eggs, cheese, and yogurt turned up in the least likely places (also honey). Our friend has done this in many other places and had a smartphone with a Google Translate-generated list of all the things he couldn’t eat. Waiters would frequently read it and shake their heads.
I was also surprised by some dishes that I would have thought would be made with olive oil elsewhere in the Middle East that are apparently made with butter in Turkey, or simple-looking bean dishes that were cooked in chicken or lamb stock. Also, pita glazed with egg white? Isn’t it typically just flour, water, yeast and salt?
P.S. Also if you plan to eat vegan in Turkey, being willing to eat eggplant is very helpful. Our friend wasn’t willing to eat eggplant.
Even in the most vegan-friendly places on earth, vegans have problems eating out. A vegan traveling had best get used to picnics.
I’ve known vegans who have suspended some of their rules while traveling. Probably not all of them will do that, but there are pragmatic people out there.
I’m vegetarian, not vegan, and I even have trouble in smaller American communities, let alone in foreign countries. While traveling, I try to be flexible and I’ll bend if my food preferences are likely to get in the way of my traveling companions’ enjoyment of the trip.
Likewise. I even had some trouble in New Orleans, since saying “I’m a vegetarian” typically got me offered some of the near-omnipresent seafood from the area.
Did you know you actually got me started eating eggplant as an adult ;)? All those years ago in Spain when you insisted on making pasta sauce with eggplant because it was the only decent-looking vegetable in the store. I had assiduously avoided it since childhood ( when I despised it ), but after some pro forma low-level whining to establish my martyrdom, I sucked it up, ate it and didn’t hate it.
Now I eat the stuff all the time. Go figure :D.
You did a hell of a job disguising the whining, then - I don’t remember it at all! Or maybe I’m just that fabulous a cook…
I just traveled with a group that included 4 vegetarians or vegans (including one who couldn’t have gluten). The big challenge was finding places where the raw vegetables would be safe. Finding those places, salads, many vegetables, and many vegetarian dishes were also vegan. Being willing to eat a lot of rice, or non-local cereal in handfuls out of the box you schlepped from the US or Europe, plus carry a jar of peanut butter, helps. So did Yelp and blogs/sites listing vegetarian/vegan restaurants.
Let me know if you ever need to find gluten-free (though not vegan) cupcakes in Cambodia.
If you’re vegan, Spain is likely to be a bad place to visit. Between sandwiches vegetales which include tuna and egg, egg in half our sauces, honey in others, chicken stock used as if it came from the faucet, Andalusians insisting that poultry isn’t meat or that a spinach lasagna with bacon as its main ingredient is “vegetarian” (no, you fucks, the one that’s vegetarian is the kind made by the rest of the world), finding food with zero animal-origin products requires either cooking it yourself or locating the nearest home-cooking restaurant and reaching an agreement with the cook (many traditional dishes can be turned vegan by the non-adition of a single ingredient, but cooking takes time).
ETA: my cousin was vegan except for milk (the whole family mainlines it) when at home; he’d often skip the “meal” part of family celebrations and join us over coffee. But when he was abroad or somebody’s guest, he wouldn’t even have thought of mentioning a non-medical food requirement.
Well, if you will be a fussy eater…