Charity says plain and fruit scones have been dairy-free for years, but can be ‘enjoyed with butter or cream’
The National Trust has long prided itself on its famous scones. There is even a blog dedicated to them, along with a “scone of the month” feature.
And with more than 3m sold every year, including those served with cream teas at its 300-plus tearooms, they are seen as an integral part of the National Trust day out.
Continue reading...Food Standards Agency advises consumers with dairy and fish allergies to check labels carefully
People with dairy and fish allergies are being advised not to buy vegan products without checking the label carefully as they may contain animal products due to cross-contamination.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has launched a campaign to make consumers aware of the dangers after research released by the regulatory body showed 62% of people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who have allergic reactions to animal-based products, or who buy for others who do, are confident that vegan products are always safe to eat.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Trading standards body warns shoppers with severe allergies could face ‘tragic consequences’
More than a third of foods labelled vegan contained animal products, research has found, prompting experts to warn shoppers with severe allergies they face potentially “tragic consequences”.
Forensic scientists found traces of egg or milk in an array of goods that were labelled as vegan or plant-based, with trading standards bosses calling for legal protection to stop consumers being “exploited by unethical food businesses”.
Continue reading...The popular chocolate and peanut butter treat is one of two new ‘plant based’ offerings from the chocolatier in the next two months
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are getting the vegan treatment.
The Hershey Company said on Tuesday that Reese’s plant-based peanut butter cups, which go on sale this month, will be its first vegan chocolates sold nationally. A second plant-based offering, Hershey’s plant-based extra creamy with almonds and sea salt, will follow in April.
Continue reading...From plant-eating bodybuilders to role models like Lewis Hamilton, so-called ‘hegans’ are turning gender stereotypes on their head
It was a Sunday afternoon in the late 1980s and the house was filled with the fatty scent of roast lamb. I absentmindedly enquired about the origins of lunch and my brother pointed at the mewing sheep in the field adjacent to our house. I was a five-year-old boy, and I decided on the spot to become the first vegetarian in my family.
My parents, while broadly supportive, were understandably bemused – and concerned. It was a less enlightened time, and my lack of dietary protein was a constant worry. They assuaged this by occasionally feeding me Chicken McNuggets under the not entirely misplaced logic that they weren’t really meat. After I’d cottoned on, I would sheepishly order a cheeseburger “without the burger” whenever we went to McDonald’s.
Continue reading...Dairy alternative goes on sale at Waitrose this week, the latest offering in a booming alt-milk market worth £400m a year
First came soya, nut and then oat but the new challenger to the plant milk crown is the humble spud as potato milk arrives on UK supermarket shelves.
Described as “deliciously creamy” and capable of producing the “perfect foam” for a homemade latte or cappuccino, the Swedish potato milk brand Dug goes on sale in 220 Waitrose stores this week.
Continue reading...From London to San Francisco, haute cuisine is joining the food revolution. Michelin-starred chefs explain they’re going meat-free
Alexis Gauthier used to sell 20kg of foie gras a week. Now the chef, whose London-based restaurant became entirely vegan in 2021, only sells a plant-based version. Since becoming vegan, he admits, Gauthier Soho has “lost a lot of customers, sadly”. But he says he has gained even more new diners, all looking for something different and sustainable and prepared to pay the price.
Gauthier is not the only chef to abandon the animal produce traditionally associated with fine dining. While the number of meat-free menus has been burgeoning for some time in lower- and mid-priced restaurants, now a growing number of the world’s top chefs are starting to put plants centre stage.
Continue reading...Migraines disappeared after man started diet that included lots of dark-green leafy vegetables, study shows
Health experts are calling for more research into diet and migraines after doctors revealed a patient who had suffered severe and debilitating headaches for more than a decade completely eliminated them after adopting a plant-based diet.
He had tried prescribed medication, yoga and meditation, and cut out potential trigger foods in an effort to reduce the severity and frequency of his severe headaches – but nothing worked. The migraines made it almost impossible to perform his job, he said.
Continue reading...This store-cupboard staple is fantastic in curries and works brilliantly in sweet dishes too, whether you fancy panna cotta, grapefruit cheesecake or a super-rich hot chocolate
Coconut milk has a reliable transformative power, turning humble ingredients into something exotic, enticing and a little festive. In a short amount of time, a couple of aubergines become aubergine curry, for example. Discovering a tin of coconut milk in the cupboard opens up possibilities.
But if you are not a regular user of the stuff, you may be alarmed to find that it’s one of a bewildering array of related by-products, including coconut water, coconut oil, coconut cream, creamed coconut (which comes in a block) and cream of coconut. Are any of these ingredients similar or interchangeable? Sort of. Coconut milk and coconut cream are both made from squeezing the grated flesh of the fruit, with coconut cream being the richer version from the first pressing. If you have a fresh coconut, it is possible to do this yourself.
Continue reading...If cellular agriculture is going to improve on the industrial system it is displacing, it needs to grow without passing the cost on to workers, consumers and the environment
Americans will eat about 2bn chicken nuggets this year, give or take a few hundred million. This deep-fried staple is a way of profiting off the bits that are left after the breast, legs and wings are lopped off the 9 billion or so factory-farmed chickens slaughtered in the US every year. Like much else that is ubiquitous in contemporary life, the production of nuggets is controlled by a small group of massive companies that are responsible for a litany of social and ecological harms. And, like many of the commodities produced by this system, they are of dubious quality, cheap, appealing and easy to consume. Nuggets are not even primarily meat, but mostly fat and assorted viscera – including epithelium, bone, nerve and connective tissue – made palatable through ultra-processing. As the political economists Raj Patel and Jason Moore have argued, they are a homogenised, bite-size avatar of how capitalism extracts as much value as possible from human and nonhuman life and labour.
But if chicken nuggets are emblematic of modern capitalism, then they are ripe for disruption. Perhaps their most promising challenger is a radically different sort of meat: edible tissue grown in vitro from animal stem cells, a process called cellular agriculture. The sales pitch for the technology is classic Silicon Valley: unseat an obsolete technology – in this case, animals – and do well by doing good.
Continue reading...The secret to an authentic taste and mouth-feel is fat, so what’s the best substitute for dairy? Our resident perfectionist tries them all …
Plant-based ice-cream, like so much else in the vegan world, has come on leaps and bounds in both range and quality in recent years as the market for it has grown, but many commercial varieties still replace dairy and eggs with a long list of perfectly harmless, yet still less than enticing ingredients such as fully refined soybean oil. Without stabilisers, the homemade kind may not last quite as well in the freezer but, frankly, it doesn’t need to: it’s unlikely to be in there long.
This recipe makes a virtue of coconut’s flavour, as well as of its natural creaminess, though you could also use it as a base for other ingredients, folding in fruit puree or chocolate chips after churning, say, or adding the likes of cocoa powder or peppermint extract to the base itself. Richer than a sorbet, lighter and cleaner than standard ice-cream, it’s really not just for vegans.
Continue reading...There is so much more to do with an avocado than just mash it up, whether you decide to make a grilled peach salad, Mexican chicken soup or fabulous ice-cream
Avocado has three main uses: the first is avocado toast; the second is guacamole; the third is being held aloft as a totem for why millennials will never be able to afford their own homes. This is all rather unfair. The sheer number of air miles that it takes to reach your plate is often so vast that an avocado should be a treat. Thoughtlessly slapping one on a piece of toast simply won’t cut it. Here are some more distinctive uses for this ingredient.
Continue reading...Rice flour and sweet potato make chewy-crunchy cakes to coat with a salty-sour sesame dip
When I think of food that “sparks joy”, to borrow the phrase of a well-known house organiser, I don’t think of multicoloured cakes or the smoke and dance of Mexican restaurant sizzlers. It’s the fun, playful chewiness of the Japanese glutinous flour rice cakes called mochi that I want. Often they’re sweet, filled with adzuki beans or peanuts, but they can also be savoury, as in today’s recipe. Here, they are fried like pancakes to give them a toasty, crisp exterior before being coated in a deeply flavourful and dark sesame sauce.
Continue reading...If politicians are serious about change, they need to incentivise it, say scientists and writers
The UK business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, is considering a “full vegan diet” to help tackle climate change, saying people will need to make lifestyle changes if the government is to meet its new emissions target of a 78% reduction on 1990 levels by 2035.
But how much difference would it make if everyone turned to a plant-based diet? Experts say that changing the way we eat is necessary for the future of the planet but that government policy is needed alongside this. If politicians are serious about wanting diet changes, they also need to incentivise it, scientists and writers add.
Continue reading...Concerns over carbon emissions and food crises are fuelling a move away from meat consumption as a symbol of wealth
The window of a KFC in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou hosts the image of a familiar mound of golden nuggets. But this overflowing bucket sporting Colonel Sanders’ smiling face is slightly different. The bucket is green and the nuggets within it are completely meat free.
Over the last couple of years, after many years of rising meat consumption by China’s expanding middle classes for whom eating pork every day was a luxurious sign of new financial comforts, the green shoots of a vegan meat revolution have begun to sprout. Although China still consumes 28% of the world’s meat, including half of all pork, and boasts a meat market valued at $86bn (£62bn), plant-based meat substitutes are slowing carving out a place for themselves among a new generation of consumers increasingly alarmed by food crises such as coronavirus and African swine fever.
Continue reading...Halfway through Veganuary and running out of ideas? Here are some reader suggestions of comforting but easy meals to add to your repertoire
This cake has passed the vigorous “visiting non-vegan children” test with flying colours. Preheat the oven to 180C. In a bowl, stir together 375g (1½ cups) plain flour, 190g (¾ cup) sugar, 2 tsp baking powder, ¼ tsp salt, 1½ tbsp poppy seeds and 125g (½ cup) almond meal (or finely chopped almonds). Add 190g soy milk, 2 tsp orange extract, the zest of 1 orange, 60g (¼ cup) olive oil and egg substitute equal to 1 egg, then stir together gently until just mixed. Pour into a lightly oiled 20cm (8in) cake pan and bake for 25-30 min, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Make an orange icing using icing sugar and some of the orange’s juice, then spread over the cooled cake. Simon Perry, cyber-sales trainer, New South Wales, Australia
Continue reading...The high-protein meat substitute is one of the world’s most versatile ingredients. Here’s how to use it in everything from tasty stir-fries to nutritious smoothies
On 11 January 1770, Benjamin Franklin, then in London, wrote a letter to a friend in Philadelphia, enclosing some soya bean seeds (“Chinese garavances”, referring to garbanzos, or chick-peas) and forwarding a recipe for a type of cheese that could be derived from them, which he called “tau-fu”.
Franklin may never have actually tasted tofu, and certainly didn’t know much about making it, much less cooking with it. To some extent this ignorance persists in the west, where tofu is prized as a high-protein meat substitute, albeit one so bland that it is basically a texture awaiting a flavour. Tofu may be versatile, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we know what to do with it and, unless you’re a vegan, it can be hard to get excited about it. If that’s the case, here are 17 recipes to change your mind.
Continue reading...Whether you fancy a pulled ‘pork’ sandwich or a filling chana masala, these are the meat-free recipes to get you through the first chilly weeks of the year
At this time of year, the air is colder, the nights are longer and all anyone really wants is something warm and comforting to eat. However, if you happen to be vegan, your options can still be embarrassingly limited. Still, never fear, here’s the pick of the best vegan comfort-food recipes around.
Continue reading...Multinational plans to cash in on consumer trend towards reducing meat and dairy intake
Unilever is setting a target of €1bn (£900m) in annual sales of its plant-based foods through some of its best-known brands, as it seeks to cash in on the growing number of consumers reducing their meat and dairy intake.
The estimated five-fold sales growth over the next five to seven years will be driven by new products from The Vegetarian Butcher meat-free label, and bolstered by expansion of dairy-free ice cream and mayonnaise ranges from Ben & Jerry’s, Hellmann’s, Magnum and Wall’s.
Continue reading...Tasters compile league table of items such as turkey, gravy and yule logs from 52 UK stockists
Marks & Spencer and Waitrose have swept the board in an independent taste test of this year’s Christmas food and drink, both clinching first place in three categories of the UK’s festive favourites.
M&S was awarded top spot for its Christmas pudding, gravy and frozen turkey in the annual exercise by the Good Housekeeping Institute, while its rival, Waitrose, triumphed in the Christmas cake, champagne and yule log listings and was also rated for a vegan centrepiece.
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