Bolding mine.
So what McDonalds is saying is that the fries are DAIRY, to be served alongside beef?! Thanks for the heads-up. I’d cross them off my list, but I did that several years ago.
As Boulter’s Canary alluded to, Guinness uses Isinglass as a fining agent, which is a fish product. While they say that it all settles out of the beer before it is sent out, it still makes it unsuitable for most vegetarians
Not in Israel, presumably. 
The best burger and milkshake meal I ever had was in Tel Aviv, Israel. Go figure.
(Although there’s this place in Ft. Lauderdale that was a very close second.)
At least in the 19th century, they did. From About.com :
Here’s one recipe I’ve used:
But here I’ve found one using the fruiting body of the plant which is vegan. This is the only reference I can find to using anything other than the root. It doesn’t look fluffy at all:
[Herbal geek hijack] Marshmallow root is one of the few plants that extracts its active ingredients better in cold water than hot. If you make a hot tea of it, it’s slightly slippery. If you soak it in cold water, you get a beautiful mucilaginous goo the exact consistency and viscosity of snot, which is absolutely tasteless. I used to give my students extra credit for swigging it like that old spittoon joke. [/hgh]
Are you sure the milkshake had real dairy in it? I had a burger and shake meal at Burgeranch where the shake was made with rice milk. Really good, too.
Opalcat & Dangerosa, thanks for the info. How do those vegan gelatin analogues compare to the animal-collagen based product? Worthy in their own right, or subpar substitutes?
No, I’m not sure, but as I vaguely recall it tasted wonderful, no matter how it was made. This was at Hard Rock Cafe, and we had just been working like the dickens on a kibbutz for a couple of weeks. Man, I needed American style food at that point.
www.pangeaveg.com sells vegan marshmallows, but I have never tried them. One thing that is nice: marshmallow fluff doesn’t contain gelatin, so I use that when I make Rice Krispies treats.
I’m a meat eater. I’ve learned that anytime anyone says “its just as good” they are lying through their teeth or have been a vegetarian so long they’ve completely forgotten what meat (geletin, baked goods made with eggs, real butter, whipped cream) tastes like. I miss my bread - it ISN’T as good without the flour and there is no denying it.
I think some of the substitutes are too gummy or rubbery. I’ve had vegan gummy bears that aren’t bad, but went stale far faster than their non-vegetarian counterpart. Vegan jello that was too hard and rubbery (but I’ve made regular jello that’s too hard or too soft, so maybe it wasn’t the substitute). The other thing is that when I’m cooking for vegetarians and vegans, I don’t feel like I have the same trust in my recipes than when I cook without worrying about eggs and dairy. Sometimes the recipe is pretty good (vegan peanut butter cookies - couldn’t tell the difference - I have a pretty good gluten free chocolate chip cookie recipe - not vegan, but the same ‘sub in and create something similar’ idea), sometimes you wonder why vegans don’t starve rather than eat this crap. (Vegan mayo isn’t worth the bother, IMO). I’m sure if I cooked vegetarian more often than I do (vegan in particular) I’d learn where the good recipe sources were.
Dude - agar is a seaweed that is used as a gelatin substitute. It gells at room temp, is a vegetable so it is totally vegan and easy to use.
I am not a vegetarian or vegan, but I did learn recently that the steamed vegetables at Panda Express are made with chicken broth. But then again, if you are super strict you wouldn’t be eating at Chinese fast food.
We do a lot of “experimental” cooking- trying out new recipes. Quite a few that I have made recently were vegetarian (they use butter, cheese etc…) and they were quite good. A number of others could be modified to be made without the meats by changing up the seasonings.
I have heard lots of people (aka non-veg eaters) say that all vegan/vegetarian food tastes bad or my favorite, “nasty”, which is completely untrue. Like any food, its about the ingredients and how you prepare it.
A lot of restaurants hide animal products in seemingly innocent foods. Some examples (may not apply to all locations, and may not be current–it’s been a while since I checked):
Macaroni Grill, at least last time I checked, used some beef product in their marinara sauce and some chicken product in their alfredo sauce.
Cracker Barrel corn muffins have some sort of non-veg ingredients (lard? I can’t remember) as do a number of their “veggie” side dishes.
Outback steakhouse uses (or at least used to use) chicken broth in their mashed potatoes. (Yes, sometimes it happens that as a vegetarian you find yourself eating somewhere like a steakhouse. Family gatherings, etc. It pretty much sucks as much as you’d expect.)
This is just a sample. Some vegetarians choose the “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy of dining out, some prefer to know and avoid. Up to the individual. I personally don’t think it’s some great moral failing if you sometimes ingest a hidden animal ingredient that you didn’t know about.
I knew McDonald’s fries contained beef fat. I didn’t know that they also contained milk. Dang it. If anybody knows anything about other chains’ fries, I’ll be in the corner with my fingers in my ears. I don’t want to hear anything about onion rings either.
That only works sometimes with me. McDonald’s fries just made me think, “Damn, I must be getting too old to eat greasy food like fries,” when my stomach got mildly grumpy after eating them. Then I discovered the real cause. Yeah, veggies “shouldn’t” be eating there, but sometimes on a road trip it can be hard to find acceptable food and you just want some french fries.
Other times, hidden animal ingredients make me throw up even when I don’t know they’re in there - probably they’re in greater amounts than the aforementioned fries. How do I know in some cases? I’ve gone back to check out the label only to see the ingredients in the fine print, or had people call to tell me what they hid in the food they served me.
Isn’t gelatin used in camera film and photo paper? If so, is it animal-based or can agar be used?
Would vegans then have to switch to digital?
The heresy goes back some ways. My copy of Escoffier’s “A Guide To Modern Cookery” (copyright 1907) states clearly that mayonnaise is made with egg yolks only.
Dangerosa, what is “casual gluten intolerance”? My friend who has celiac disease, aka gluten intolerance, had to get a blood test for diagnosis. He was low-grade sick for years, couldn’t put on weight, had chronic digestive upset, and was told it increased his risk for intestinal cancer if he didn’t cut all wheat/gluten out of his diet. He is fanatical about avoiding ALL wheat products, including things like “natural flavorings” and stuff he can’t nail down. This greatly limits what he can eat. I don’t really know all the details, but it doesn’t sound very casual to me.
It can be, but it’s easiest done with a whole egg, with no alteration in taste or texture. Eggs make a great starter to your emulsion, because the fat in the yolks “likes” to mix with the water in the whites. By starting your emulsion with a whole egg, you can incorporate a lot more oil a lot more easily. I suspect, though do not know, that the switch from an egg yolk to a whole egg was when mayonnaise went from being “ow, my arm hurts” tiring and difficult to “hey, this is easier than Grandma told me it would be!”
That’s why I don’t say I have celiac sprue. People with celiac can have real serious reactions to gluten. And there are wheat allergies (as in “need an epi pen”) as well.
I don’t ingest much gluten and avoid it. Since giving it up, I have almost no “gastrointestial distress” - diaherra, gas, burping (the burping actually threw me over the edge) - I’d gotten to “random vomiting.” Migraines have nearly disappeared. (I didn’t have the “don’t put on weight” issue - severe celiac sprue really limits what your body pulls out of its food - whatever I have it isn’t to that level).
But I haven’t had a blood test (its followed by an intestianal biopsy - blood test isn’t sufficient) to see if what I have is officially celiac - neither my doctor or I really feel its necessary (you have to go back to the gluten to create a positive test result - which is part of it - then you need to have the biopsy - which isn’t pleasant - and in the end, you know that eating wheat makes you feel like crap - which I already know). And I can tolerate with no apprent ill effects the occational soy sauce or bite of someone elses dessert - I don’t worry about the amount of flour that might be hiding in a cup of soup. I’ll do things like eat the key lime pie and leave the crust - which someone who had real issues wouldn’t do. But I don’t go to Jimmy Johns and have a sandwich, when I eat cookies they are gluten free, I don’t eat anything that’s been dredged in flour, I use gluten free spagetti noodles, and I don’t eat pizza. I have three girlfriends who are also gluten intolerant to varying degrees of fanaticism. Fanatiscism just isn’t me. One of my girlfriends is also lactose intolerant as well. Another one is a vegetarian. We are a fun group to feed.
There is also the belief among people whose kids are autistic that a gluten free diet can be beneficial. So avoiding gluten is done for that reason as well. The autisic diet avoids other things as well - but I’m not sure what it is.
Gluten intolerance/celiac is very underdiagnosed. For people without severe issues, its gets diagnosed as “irritable bowl syndrome” or other equally “yeah, your GI tract is screwed up” sorts of non-diagnoses. We were looking for ulcers with mine for two years before one day I said “I’m going to give up gluten.”