Health Attributes of Vegan Foods

[Guest guest]

Hi folks:

We have some friends who recently became vegans. This is a long story which I will refrain from telling here. For a start they may have joined for all I know. And might recognize themselves from my description of them!

When they came to dinner a couple of weeks ago we made an effort to serve them vegan foods. One thing we did was go to the leading supplier of vegan food products in this big city and buy a selection of stuff to serve.

Two products are of note. We bought three vegan patés. On perusing the ingredient lists long after they had left I see the following: largest ingredient is water; second largest is palm kernel oil; next largest ingredient is yeast, which presumably is added in a small quantity.

From this it appears these products are essentially palm kernel oil (the absolutely worst stuff second only behind hydrogenated fats) with enough water added to emulsify it, plus a few flavorings.

The second product was a vegan ice cream. It is called "Tofutti" no doubt trying to give the impression it is made from tofu? The ingredients list says the six largest components are: "water; sugar [empty calories] ; corn oil [carcinogenic empty fat calories]; corn syrup [more empty calories, perhaps also carcinogenic?]; soy proteins and tofu [plenty more fat calories]. "

Seems to me, based on the above, that the study previously posted here which compared the health of vegans with that of health-conscious omnivores, should also have separated out the health-conscious vegans from the others.

Little wonder vegans are no healthier, if they think it is fine to eat this kind of stuff, and the leading retailers of it think so too.

Rodney.