All posts tagged: veganism

Nearly one third of youngsters find vegan labelled products more appealing

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A recent US study by Morning Consult on consumer trends covered these three topics: 1) online versus in store shopping habits 2) purchasing considerations and 3) product labelling. In this last section on product labelling, respondents were asked to indicate whether respective terms made food more or less appealing to them. The terms included free range, glutenfree, fresh, natural flavours and another dozen or so terms. A vegan labelled product Stats with respect to the term vegan: Overall, 17% said the term vegan made the product more appealing to buy. 35% said the term vegan made the product neither less nor more appealing. Another 35% said it made the product less appealing. And 12% said they didn’t know, or had no opinion. So that means that over half of respondents (52%) find a vegan labelled product more appealing or neither less or more appealing (combined). ‘Fresh’ was found to be the most appealing term to label a product with, while ‘vegan’ was overall the least. 81% of respondents say that a food or beverage product would be more appealing …

Drop the ‘strict’

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Words are not simply neutral  expressions of how we experience or want to describe reality. They shape and give meaning to our thoughts and ideas, and even though we think we are giving an objective account of reality, our choice of words often has a very subjective interpretation. Here are a few texts about veganism (or a vegan diet). Note the use of ‘strict’.   The repeated use of the word ‘strict’, portrays veganism (even more) as something extreme and hard. Don’t make it sound more difficult than it is, and drop the use of the word ‘strict’.

First vegan market in Lille (France)

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A couple of weeks ago on a Sunday, there was a vegan market in Lille (Rijsel, France). Lille is just across the border with Belgium, and for us that is just an hour’s drive, so we were eager to go check it out! The vegan market was organised by Végétal & Vous, a vegan shop in Lille. We could park not too far from the Community center. A bit of a bummer that the elevator was out of order, although the organisor had mentionned and warned about this the day before on the facebook page, and offered help to anyone needing assistance.  But we managed 🙂 The market was not really that big (certainly not when compared to other vegan fairs or festivals we’ve been to, like Veggieworld, VegfestUK, vegfestNL or Vegan Summerfest). But nonetheless with a nice variety of shops, products and organisations. And since it was in France, also some new brands that we had never heard of. But also some products that I personally don’t really associate with veganism (like dream cathers and …

Farmer switches to veganic farming and gives cows to sanctuary

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I find this one of the most inspiring stories of the last years. Although there’s no shortage of positive stories about veganism in mainstream media (about the numbers of vegans growing, vegan celebrities or the increasing offer of vegan products), most of these focus on the consumption side of the spectrum. There are far less stories from the other side, being the production side. And in the end, when it comes to the food aspect of veganism, that’s what it’s all about: ending the use of animals in food production. Making farmers choose vegan options, switching to veganic farming (without the use of any animal products, like manure). Jay Wilde, a 59 year old vegetarian farmer from Derbyshire (UK) inherited the farm when his dad died in 2011. He couldn’t bear to send the cows to slaughter anymore and has donated about 60 cows to a vegan sanctuary. And is now switching to veganic vegetable farming. “I’m relieved to have made the decision to no longer farm animals, something which I always found quite upsetting,” he …

Interview with Trudi

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A couple of months ago, Ned from The Way of the Squirrel Books posted a call to other bloggers to do an interview. I had seen such calls for interviews before on other blogs, but had never actually done one of them. I was contemplating on editing the ‘about’ section on my blog anyway, but then thought this was also a great way of introducing readers with the person behind the blog. A good opportunity to share some insights into why I started blogging, some general thoughts on veganism (keeping in mind it is also an opportunity to reach people who may have never heard of veganism) and just some more general personal stuff. Ned sent me some questions, which I replied to, and he then edited it. It was fun doing, and thanks again Ned, for the opportunity! 🙂 The original post is up here on Ned’s blog, The Way of the Squirrel books, reposted here with permission. INTERVIEW: MEET AND GREET MONDAY – BLOGGER: BRUGESVEGAN Well, here we are again.  Another Monday and another …

Shopping at GoVeg vegan shop, Liège

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Shop review #32 – Goveg is a vegan shop in city center of Liège (in the south of Belgium, 200 km from Bruges). We had already got to know this shop during Vegan Summerfest in Ghent last year (see review here). We planned a trip to Liège to visit the Human Zoos exposition in La Cité Miroir (more about this very interesting exhibition in a later blogpost!) so this was a perfect occasion to do some shopping at GoVeg. The Goveg vegan shop is nor far from restaurant Como en Casa (actually in the same street), where we had lunch (review will follow). The shop is not really big, but it is packed with the ‘usual suspects’: body and care products, soy chuncks, vegan shoes, grains, nuts, jam, cereals, chocolate, etc. Also several coolers with vegan cheezes, sausages, pizza, burgers, etc. I was happy to find a pack of ‘vegan eggs’ from Follow Your Heart, which I quite like to eat scrambled! And also the vegan caviar that I had discovered first in Ghent and later also bought at …

Vegans not welcome!

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Yes, they do exist. Restaurants that do not want to prepare a vegan menu. I have yet to encounter a sign on a restaurant’s door that explicitly says so, but there are certainly chefs and many in the catering bussiness who share this view. Over the years, I have contacted dozens of restaurants with the question if they can make us a vegan menu. I have had many positive replies, but onfortunately also many restaurants letting me know they cannot or will not make a vegan menu. Sometimes it’s just a straightforward and simple ‘no we don’t do that‘. Sometimes they add some explanation like ‘it’s not our specialty‘, ‘we don’t work with such products‘ or ‘we don’t think we can give you a satisfying culinary experience‘ or even ‘because it requires a total reorganisation of our kitchen‘. Sometimes they even refer me to vegan friendly places in town. I appreciate restaurants taking the time to reply to my request, even if they answer they cannot or will not provide a vegan menu. Rather they are honest about it, than …

Inspired by the Intersectionality Conference at VegFest, London

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A couple of weeks ago, at the end of October 2016, we went to VegFest in London. This was a two day event at the Olympia Conference center, on Hammersmith Road (east London). It is not a free festival: we bought tickets in advance which were only £9 per person (buy one, get one half price). Tickets at the door were £15. We were especially interested in the Intersectionality Conference on Sunday. Arriving at the opening time of 11AM on Saturday, it became immediately clear that this is huge event! We found a long queue going round the block to get to the entrance at the west side of Olympia. We made good progress though, and after about only 10 minutes of queuing, scanning of our tickets and a security check, we could enter the venue. There were two large halls on the first floor, with dozens of stalls. The lectures were in the auditorium and conference rooms on the second floor, where there were also stalls from several NGO’s. The Olympia is a really well known venue, where …

Vegan? So what do you eat? xx Photogallery xx

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So what do you eat? We do not get the question that often anymore, but still, some people have a hard time grasping what vegans eat. So what’s left after you take away the animal parts in a traditional dish, nothing right? Unfortunately, some people still seem to think that. Could not be further from the truth of course! It is about making new combinations and discovering new products. And several years after going vegan, we are still on a fascinating journey of discovery! In our minds, veganism is not about leaving things out, because we simply don’t regard animal products as ‘edible things’ anymore. In this post, I let the photos speak for themselves. It is a collection of photos of our homemade meals that I posted on Instagram (I will make a seperate blogpost with desserts soon). Most of the dishes are inspiration of the moment. Some are based on recipes from vegan cookbooks. We never considered ourselves as ‘foodies’, and I was actually quite surprised that a friend did refer to us as foodies the …

A vegan look at Texel (the Netherlands)

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A couple of weeks ago, we were in Texel for a couple of days. Texel is an island in the Netherlands, north west of Amsterdam. There are only a handfull of small villages on Texel, but the island is very touristic, so there are quite a lot of hotels and restaurants. Not that much options for vegans though. In previous blogposts with restaurant reviews, I promised I would give an overview of places where you can have a vegan meal (and also some restaurants that replied they cannot fullfill our vegan needs). You can see this overview below. First, some other impressions from Texel, from our vegan point of view. sheep, sheep and more sheep E-ve-ry-where you look on Texel, you see sheep. Thousands and thousands of them. Not that Texel is a sanctuary for sheep of course. They are raised for economic purposes: for their meat and milk, and also for wool. Hence sheep products like sheep meat, cheese and wool (and even sheep skins) are a common feature in restaurants and shops in Texel. We read online …