“Vegan” Does Not Always Mean Healthy
The food industry has found a vein in vegan eating. But processed vegan products are just as bad as the rest.
In recent years the food industry has realized that it had an untapped vein in the vegetarian population. We have gone from a scenario in which finding soy drink was a rarity that was sought in some herbalists, to having in any neighborhood supermarket an assortment of vegetable drinks with seven or eight references (including private label), soy yogurts, tofu, vegetarian cold cuts, vegan cream ice cream …
The large consumer brands have launched vegetable lines so as not to lose that audience, and they have also taken the opportunity to wrap these products in a healthy marketing halo with which they also open a market in the rest of the population.
And that’s speaking of ordinary supermarkets. In specialized stores, the assortment is infinite: from vegan cheeses, all kinds of sausages and vegetable meats, sausages, hamburgers, nuggets, veganesas, pates of a thousand flavors, precooked, sauces … and the offer does not stop growing.
At first it seems like good news. But I would like us to delve a little more into that great range of vegan products that the food industry makes available to us today.
Unhealthy vegan products
First of all, it is important to keep one thing in mind: that a product bears the “vegan” seal, the “V-label” or any other legend that identifies it as a 100% vegetable product, it only refers to the origin of the ingredients that make it up. . It says absolutely nothing about its healthiness.
Unfortunately, the ingredients that make highly processed products undesirable are not of animal origin : added sugar in any format (sucrose, syrups, molasses, dextrose, glucose…). Virtually all added sugar is of plant origin, except for honey. Unhealthy fats like hydrogenated fats, refined oils, and palm fat. And salt. That’s the triad that floods heavily processed products and makes them unhealthy, and veganism is not immune to any of them.
Added sugar in plant milks
Vegetable drinks and yogurts are often products very high in added sugar. It is important to check the drink of our choice so that it does not carry them or contain them in low quantity (less than 5g / 100ml). Counted brands, in fact I only know three, they make soy yogurts without sugar or sweeteners.
Poor quality fats in vegan products
Vegan cheeses are usually a conglomerate of poor quality fat, starch, and color. Only the nut facts are spared, nutritionally speaking. The same can be said for vegan cold cuts.
Veggie burgers or sausages are the same. In addition, we usually consume them as a protein part of the dish, when their quality protein content is often very low. It is not uncommon to see a tofu burger in which tofu is only 19% of the ingredients, or a vegetable sausage whose first ingredient is water and the second refined vegetable oil. In general, they are products of low protein value, rich in starches, poor quality fats and salt.
Many vegetable patés are based on palm fats, or even worse, hydrogenated fats.
Vegan sweets and buns are exactly as unhealthy as their traditional counterparts.
What the ECO label hides
In addition, these products are often sold in specialized stores, with a high price and often with the ECO seal, which gives us the feeling of buying something healthy. The ECO seal, like the Vegan seal, does not guarantee healthy ingredients, only that they have been obtained in compliance with the legislation of said denomination. Some ECO and vegan cookies are still pastries to consume as little as possible.
Consuming vegan and healthy products is possible
The good news is that we don’t need these products : let’s choose well vegetable drinks and soy yogurts by checking the labeling. Let’s consume vegan cheeses only if they are based on nuts, let’s make homemade legume, tofu, or textured soy burgers. Or we consume the tofu, seitan or soy as is, not in the form of a nugget or a sausage. Let’s remove sweets and buns from our diet, giving way to fruit and nuts. Sweets on special occasions.
To have a healthy vegan diet we do not need these products. We are enough with fruit, vegetables, vegetables, nuts, seeds, olive oil, legumes and derivatives such as tofu or tempeh, and a B12 supplement. It is easy and cheap.
