I went to a seminar by Dr. Neal D. Barnard. While I have made some changes in my diet I have no intention on becoming a vegitarian nor a vegan. His presentation was non-preachy and non-judgemental and the points he made has value even for those of us who still consume animal products.
One of the things he talked about was how one could easily maintain a vegan diet and stilll dine at mainstream restaurants. He mentioned eating items like vegitarian sandwhiches with no cheese at Subway, bean burritos at Taco Bell, and pasta at Olive Garden.
Wait a minute. Doesn’t bread usually contain milk, and sometimes butter? Don’t most refried beans contain lard? Isn’t pasta made with eggs? He had a Q&A session afterwards but I hadn’t thought of these things until a few days later.
SOME bread contains milk and/or cheese, not all. Mainstream chains often have nutrition facts available from a manager, in a brochure, or on their website. These will often list all the ingredients and allergens. Subway does have vegan sandwiches but they are disgusting, basically just veggies on bread – their veggie patties (garden burgers) have egg and milk.
Some Taco Bells use lard and others don’t, apparently it’s a store policy that you have to ask a knowledgeable manager about.
A lot of pasta has egg (usually everything except spaghetti), but again, check a particular restaurant’s nutrition facts to be sure.
I don’t know who Dr. Barnard is, but I think he’s overgeneralizing to say it’s EASY to dine at mainstream restaurants. It takes quite a bit of research, per restaurant, to figure out which menu items are or are not vegan and whether every franchisee follows the same rules (which wasn’t the case with Chipotle, Taco Bell, and Domino’s when I first looked into this a few years ago).
Store-bought mainstream toast bread is more likely to contain milk than the stuff that restaurants make fresh on-site, for reasons unknown to me (maybe milk helps the store-brought stuff say squisher after a few days?). Fancier bread (organic, artisan, or otherwise) for some reason is less likely to contain milk. If you go to a local co-op instead of a mainstream supermarket, you’ll find lots of vegan bread… the big brands are Ezekiel, Alvarado St, and the ex-con Dave.
Pasta: Just totally depends on the type of pasta (fettucini almost always, spaghetti almost never). Both boxed and fresh varieties can have egg.
And yeah, the doc was super casual about it and really shouldn’t be.
If you ever want to support places that DO offer vegetarian/vegan options, http://www.happycow.net/ is a great resource – basically a yelp for vegans/vegetarians.
I’m doing this to maintain my decent cholesterol and
triglycerides levels. Cutting out a little here and there (like the lard in beans) can add up. It has nothing to do with animals. For example, while I don’t want egg yolks in my pasta I still eat egg whites.
Yeah, I’m not saying you should sign up with the ALF and become an animal rights activist. Just if you want to eat out and still have less questionable ingredients when you travel, it can be a handy resource. (If only because places that care about those customers also tend to know the exact ingredients in all their dishes)
Most of the dried fettucini I’ve seen is eggless. Barilla’s appears to have no egg. DeCecco is also eggless, from what I could see. The usual distinction is whether the pasta is fresh (almost always with egg) or dried (almost always without egg.) But you can, of course, buy dry egg noodles, which definitely have egg in them.
Milk is not a usual ingredient in bread–I just checked the two different loaves I have and neither have milk. But it’s not exactly an unusual ingredient, either. It mainly serves to soften the dough/crumb and lend a little flavor. As for butter, I can’t think of any breads I’ve made with butter in the dough, but I’m sure they’re out there, as I have seen oil occasionally in a bread dough. Typically, though, it’s just flour, yeast, water, salt.
Refried beans may or may not contain lard. It depends, and, were I vegan, them being “safe” is not something I would take as assumed. You’d have to look at an ingredients list.
And it also depends on how strict your veganism is. If you get really hard core about it, you may avoid non-vegan beers and wines (they are sometimes cleared with isinglass finings [made from fish bladders] or even gelatin [made from animal bone, of course].) And then there’s issues of whether honey is vegan, and white sugar (which is commonly filtered through bone char.)
I looked through the Taco Bell bean burrito ingredients, and, minus the cheese which I assume you can ask them to leave off, there doesn’t appear to be anything not vegan in there.
At the store I buy the fat free version (the vegitarian version, while also sans lard, is not completely fat free). I eat at least 3 cans a week. I love 'em and can tell no difference in flavor between the fat free and the kind with lard.
Yeah, with the canned stuff, I really can’t tell a difference either. That partially hydrogenated lard they use is practically flavorless. Now if you make it with real rendered lard, you can taste the porkiness in them–kind of a bit of a pork rind flavor to it.
Also, flour tortillas are traditionally made with lard, although I don’t think any of the major brands have animal products in their flour tortillas.
Informative thread so far. Just one correction: the spelling is vegetarian. Hope it works out for you. I’ve been ovo-lacto vegetarian for 12 years now and am quite pleased with that.
Also, tamales. You can always substitute vegetable shortening for the lard in either of these to get more-or-less the same effect and remain vegetarian/vegan. Corn tortillas, on the other hand usually do not use lard or shortening, but I have seen recipes with a bit of lard for those. It doesn’t seem to be typical, though. They’re usually just made from straight masa (basically finely ground hominy) or masa harina (hominy flour) and water.
