The Vegan Thread

+2 :)

Here you are: https://simpleveganblog.com/tortilla-spanish-omelette-vegan-and-glutenfree/

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Nice, I occasionally make a less Spanish omelette kinda the same way with peppers and mushrooms instead of potatoes, been a while though and that looks good.

Good news corner, though of course that's the usual corporate side of it:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jul/25/uk-demand-for-new-vegan-food-products-soars-in-lockdown

Maybe lockdown has enabled people to get off the treadmill and given space to think about what fules the body. I know when I was working silly hours eating became an after thought and it was just fule not a huge amount of thought went in to it and grabbing a ham sarnie for lunch was easy and dinner was normaly an easy cooked meal chicken salad, mince and mashed pots.
given more breathing space and time combined with the staying fit in lockdown boom maybe people are turning away from meat and classic UK cooking norms.

So things going OK so far a few mishaps involving sauces and chocolate. But generally ok but I have realised we need a proper blender.
Food highlights this week have been these. Chinese pockets.

We switched out the egg for firm tofu mashed up a bit.
Recipie here.
https://healthynibblesandbits.com/chinese-chive-boxes/

Controversial vegan ad implies a rude word!

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/aug/03/vegan-food-company-provokes-advertising-campaign-meatless-farm-coronavirus

I saw that and decided against posting it, as it seems to me (a) not newsworthy in the slightest, (b) almost a thinly-disguised advert, and (c) writing-by-numbers on the basis that there is a certain demand for articles about veganism, as well as the 'inevitable' 'controversy', such that it might well have been written by Philippa Space.

Wash your mouth out, Oliver!

Sorry, tasteless joke. I've edited it out again.

I saw that and decided against posting it, as it seems to me (a) not newsworthy in the slightest, (b) almost a thinly-disguised advert, and (c) writing-by-numbers on the basis that there is a certain demand for articles about veganism, as well as the 'inevitable' 'controversy', such that it might well have been written by Philippa Space.

You do realise that's what I got across in 6 words? Also, what did you edit - I want to see filthy Schickster...

Ohh I’m going to try those! I miss them from my time in China.

Can also highly recommend vitamix. It’s not fancy, and it’s also pretty loud but it blends everything to atoms!
All those cheesy sauce recipes where you have to soak the nuts... forget it. Just put the dry nuts in, add some liquid and blend.

it’s also pretty loud

my neighbours have one of those and like to blend everything to atoms with their windows open every morning and it makes me feel very angry

Cor, your place or mine?

Yeah our hand blender is not up to the task. Will check the vitamix. Did the pockets again this week we made a big batch as they can keep in the fridge for a while and are great as a quick snack 10 mins in the oven with some good chili oil on the side 👍🌶️

I can second the vitamix.
I bought one a few months ago and it’s amazing.

https://divinations.substack.com/p/oatly-the-new-coke

Thought this was an interesting read. If anything because it made me think about the sugar content more than I have done in the past.

Disclaimer: Don’t know the author and haven’t fact checked / aware if he has an agenda

I don't know much about nutrition, so can't comment on the article, but I tried Oatly (not the famous 'barista' mix) once and didn't like it. It was probably my least favourite plant drink that I've tried (and I almost never use any others, only occasionally use soya drink in cooking when a recipe calls for it). It would certainly make sense that it's so popular because its sugar content is so high (and that the marketing works and investors have been getting involved partly because of that), but I have no idea one way or the other. As a nutritional ignoramus, the article didn't convince me that Oatly is worse nutritionally than dairy milk, just that there may be a certain logic that to achieve certain properties that people crave ('mouth feel', which I guess probably isn't important to me, and which may be one of the reasons why people insist on continuing to eat meat; 'mouth feel' may be a different thing from finer aspects of taste, e.g. the taste of spices, although of course everybody experiences both to some extent), you are quite likely to end up with things like a certain amount of sugar(s).

I do think the plant 'milk' movement is still in its infancy, despite Plamil having started (six?) decades ago, and that the products will become more refined and with more interesting properties over time. At the moment, they're not something I use much.

Lest we forget, veganism is currently popular mainly on the back of vegan junk food becoming not-quite-but-increasingly ubiquitous. The world is (and has been for a long time) very deep in the hole of a craving/financial need people have for rubbish food.

Since the GI is a measure of how much of a negative response your body has to certain sugars, the 7g of sugar in Oatly with its 100+ GI is actually potentially worse than the 12g of sugar in whole milk with a 46 GI. We can use something called the “glycemic load” to measure this, which gives us a GL for the sugar in 8oz of Oatly of 7.35, and a GL for the sugar in 8oz of whole milk of 5.52. Oatly’s glycemic load is about 33% higher than milk’s is!

This is a bit of a dubious paragraph. GI is not a measure how much of a negative response your body has to sugar. It is simply how quickly carbohydrate turns into energy, as far as I understand.

Comparisons to coke are also a bit far-fetched. Like, people who get obese from drinking fizzy drinks are probably drinking a whole lot more fizzy drinks than the average oat milk consumer is drinking oat milk. No one is sitting and drinking 2 litres of oat milk while watching TV.

No one is sitting and drinking 2 litres of oat milk while watching TV.

Is that a challenge? :)

I'm sure you could.

Tbh I don't mind the high sugar, I only have it on sugary cereal between drops at work for instant carb hits.

I pretty much only have it in tea or an occasional bowl of cereal or little bit of cooking, a litre lasts at least a week.

The sugar in it is from the oats anyway, I guess it's just higher GI because they break it down for you instead of letting your stomach do it and it's maltrose instead of lactose. They do like chocolate versions which I guess people are just drinking but I doubt at the rate people neck fizzy drinks with added refined glucose/fructose.

Well, he’s a marketing guy. Why does he get to have a say on nutrition? I would discard him based on that alone.

Also:

“It’s also hard to find compelling research suggesting milk is bad for you”

which seem strange given that he can list several links on canola oil. Obviously he is not a PubMed kind of guy.

Yes Oatly is a processed food, but carbohydrates don’t cause diabetes and you don’t get all the sex hormones from oatly that you get from cows milk, nor the saturated fat.

Ideally you should only drink water, but between cows milk and plant based milk, plant based milk always wins from a health perspective.

1st attempt at tofu scaamble today. Was good but think I could up the seasoning also next time will make sure to have fresh herbs to put on top esp parsley maybe sage. But was good. My god that black salt when you mix it in is proper eggy smell 😳😁