The humble guar bean may not look terribly exciting but it’s the source of an extremely versatile food ingredient. Cultivated traditionally in India and Pakistan, the guar bean plant produces fruit that looks rather like undersized green string beans. They’re small, bitter and perhaps not immediately inspiring. Yet guar gum, a derivative of the guar …
Sweet foods and confectionery can be a bit of a minefield once you embark on a vegan lifestyle. For a start, there’s gelatin: an animal product found in all sorts of sweets, not just the chewy ones where you might expect to encounter it. Other pitfalls awaiting the unwary vegan include the waxes and glazes …
One of the fun parts of going vegan is discovering how many of your favorite foods are “accidentally” vegan. Nobody sat down and decided that they’d follow a vegan recipe — it’s just serendipitous. Some foods, including many of your favorite snacks, are simply free from animal products because they were never required. It’s great …
Going vegan can be a big step. One of the most challenging aspects of the vegan lifestyle is uncovering all the additives and hidden ingredients that turn an ostensibly vegetable-based food into one that’s unacceptable for a vegan diet. Sometimes this means rejecting a food altogether; fortunately, in most cases, it’s just a matter of …
Vegans are just as fond of good food as anyone else — and that includes sweets. One pitfall for an ethical vegan is that many sugar producers don’t use methods and ingredients that are compatible with a vegan lifestyle. First of all, the process of growing and extracting the sugar isn’t always ethical or environmentally …
Veganism is a lifestyle rather than a diet. Even if you’re primarily a vegan for health reasons, you probably have an ethical component to your motivations. That means simply avoiding animal products may not be enough for you — you may be looking for cruelty-free ingredients too. Fortunately, there are many popular foods that fit …
If you are new to the vegan lifestyle, getting used to the various desserts and sweet treats you are unable to eat can present a challenge and, in particular, some struggle to adjust to the idea that milk chocolate is off-limits. With that being said, many chocolate-based foods do not necessarily contain milk and this …
Whether it’s that bracing cup of strong coffee in the morning, a lunchtime latte or a cappuccino after an evening meal, coffee is a major feature of many people’s days. It’s reassuring to know that coffee can be a part of a vegan lifestyle, too: a naturally vegan beverage, coffee is one everyday treat you …
Often, when people switch to a vegan lifestyle, they find it surprisingly easy to replace foods like meat, eggs, milk and cheese within their diet. Yet, an area where people can run into some difficulties is the need to replace products like butter and lard, whether it is being used as an actual food ingredient, …
As books, documentaries, web articles and other sources continue to provide evidence of the benefits of adopting a vegan diet, the diet itself continues to grow in popularity. People turn to veganism for a whole host of different reasons, from ethical concerns over the treatment of animals to environmental concerns and health concerns linked to …
