Another food rant

Oct 5th, 2024

Another food rant

This is me back on my personal food hobby horse again.  I was making a dessert for a dinner party and one of the ladies is a vegan (sigh) – so I made an apple crumble.  None of the ingredients are animal based apart from the fat in the crumble part, and the cream or custard to serve it with.

So I would normally use butter (ingredients – cream, salt), but instead I used vegan “spread” or as we would have said a few years ago “margarine” (ingredients – Vegetable Oils in varying proportions (Rapeseed, Sustainable Palm, Sunflower), Water, Salt, Emulsifiers-E471, Lecithins, Preservative-Potassium Sorbate, Acid-Lactic Acid, Flavourings, Colours – Annatto Bixin, Curcumin).

For cream, I would normally use, well, cream (ingredients – cream), but instead, let’s use vegan “cream” (ingredients – Lentil Protein Preparation (Water, 1.1% Lentil Protein), 31% Vegetable Oils (Coconut, Rapeseed), Sugar, Modified Corn Starch, Emulsifiers (Sunflower Lecithin, Sugar Esters of Fatty Acids, Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids), Stabilizers (Guar Gum, Locust Bean Gum), Natural Flavours, Salt, Colourant (Beta-Carotene)

Or we could have custard instead.  My custard is made in my kitchen and contains sugar, eggs and milk. The vegan “custard” consists of – Soya Base (Water, Hulled Soya Beans (8.1%)), Sugar, Modified Starch, Chicory Root Fibre, Calcium (Tri-Calcium Phosphate), Flavourings, Sea Salt, Thickener (Carrageenan), Curcuma Extract, Vitamins (B2, B12, D2) and is made in a factory (in Canada in this case)

No one will ever convince me that this is a good way to eat, and that making up chemical brews in other countries can conceivably be better for the environment than eating natural local food.

For example, for my upcoming dinner we are having haggis stacks (local “using all of the sheep” offal product and grown in the UK turnips and potatoes), venison casserole (wild venison from Argyll which is from culled deer, plus local carrots and onions – the wine was French though), apple crumble (from local tree (in our garden) and flour and butter from UK).

I won’t even try to argue with the perpetrators of this nonsense because I know I would never convince them.