this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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Vegan

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Shoppers prefer 'vegan' food labels to 'confusing' plant-based terms, according to new survey (www.veganfoodandliving.com)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 55 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I trust when something is "vegan" to mean it's vegan, but "plant-based" means I'm checking the ingredients list to confirm that they know what they're saying.

I've been to enough restaurants that refer to something as "plant-based", but they just mean the burger patty (served with cheese and a ranch-based sauce!).

[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago

A "meat-based" patty isn't 100% meat either. There might me onions, flour, egg, salt, spices, etc. "plant-based" is a term that just tells you "most of it is noch meat" and so you have to check the ingredients making it a pretty useless term.

Also fuck everybody who makes a meat-alternative-food that isn't vegan because they added 1% of some shit...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Sometimes it says "Plant-Based" because the bowl is vegan. Not the food, but the physical bowl it is in.

https://www.healthychoice.com/power-bowls-vegan-and-vegetarian/buddha-bowl

~Serving~ ~bowl~
made from
PLANT-
BASED
FIBER

Edit: If you are using an app that doesn't do formatting correctly, "Serving bowl" is in sub-script, not scratched out.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That sounds like they might be advertising it as plastic-free, not vegan-friendly

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

That's exactly what it is. The font size is not significantly different between those words, and it is a single sentence.

Yes it is a different size, but we're talking like font sizes 18 and 20, its not significantly different. To be fair though, plant-based is black while the rest is white.

It clearly is referring to the bowl. It has an arrow pointing to the bowl.

The other side of the packaging, where all the rest of the info about what food is in the product is located also clearly says Vegetarian in larger font. That's where any phrasing like Vegan would clearly be.

This looks like someone trying to find a complaint in an otherwise pretty clearly labelled product. No one would mistake this product unless they didn't look at the packaging.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Plant based sounds like an accurate description of something that isn't meat based, but slso isn't vegan.

If it was vegan they would call it vegan.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Currently, I still eat meat, but in theory, am working towards a world where I'm at least vegetarian. I'd expect "plant based" to mean something that someone like me would eat. By default, I'd assume it wasn't vegan and possibly not even vegetarian, and I might not even think to scrutinise the label if I was cooking a meal for vegetarian or vegan guests - I'd just pass over the product.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I've found that often "plant based" is a cop out and that companies that use it exclusively (so not only on the product, but also when you ask them outright if a product is suitable for vegans and they will only repeat "plant based") often make no effort to ensure the product is actually vegan (so no effort to avoid cross contamination and no testing to ensure no animal products have ended up in the food), they just want the vegan £££ and count on most people not taking the time to look in to it, or not caring enough.

Plantastic and "meet free" Fridge Raiders are a couple of examples that come to mind (I have been in touch with both manufacturers and both are very careful to never confirm that their products are suitable for vegans despite them marketing them directly at us), and also Flash I think it was, that I've noticed have now changed their ad which used to say something like "made with A plant based ingredient" as if that makes the whole product plant based..

It's a bit like greenwashing - wanting to make money off of the "green" market, without investing any money or effort to comply with the labelling rules.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I find vegans that care about cross contamination to be missing the forest for the trees. Veganism isn’t an allergy, it’s an ethical stance. How are animals harmed by having our food made in the same facilities as non-vegan food? Even PETA says you shouldn’t care about trace amounts of animal products when eating out so as not to make veganism seem difficult and inflexible to non-vegans thinking of making the switch.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago

In France, I've seen a few "plant-based" labeled products that actually had eggs in the recipe. At least the "vegan" label is regulated (EU iirc) so I'm sure what I eat is vegan. Spending time to read the ingredients list is not something I wanna do (I am lucky enough not to have food allergies), so I'm all for the use of non-misleading labels and easy to spot logos.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

My dumb ass be like “how do I know this broccoli is vegan”

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Good. Avoid prefixes or other bullshit. A vegan diet is a plant-based diet, but the "based" part has gotten confusing over the years. There's a term now, "plant centered", which is probably useless for product descriptions, but points out the problem.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

To be fair I was told by a dietician that a lot of companies don’t use the vegan logo in the uk because in order to do so they must be certified by the vegan society (name?) which is expensive.

Sounded a bit like a troll toll.

There should be an industry standard “vegan friendly” or other such label that doesn’t require giving loads of money to an organisation to use.

[–] dracs 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The Vegan Society does do certifications for products which will let you use their logo. I'm not aware of any laws which would stop you from calling a product vegan without that certification, just can't use their logo for it.

I can't remember if it was the EU or ISO which was working on a standard to classify a product as vegan in the past couple of years. Though the last news I heard about it was that it was being led by agricultural lobby rather than animal rights activists.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure wether that logo is really as expensive as they claim, but there are tons of products out there with kind of selfmade logos or at least a little text which reads "vegan", "vegan friendly" or "suitable for a vegan diet". Of course the official logo is the safe one, but as it's still illegal to make misleading claims I guess one can trust 99% of those labels.

[–] dracs 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I've got no idea how much the Vegan Society (or other orgs) charges for certification. As you said, plenty of other labels/logos they can use.

I do occasionally see reports of companies labeling a product as vegan when it isn't. Usually from someone not understanding what vegan means (like honey). But those are pretty rare in the grand scheme of things.

Unfortunately I'm not sure how good a case someone would have for misleading claims without any legal definition on what "Vegan" means.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

IANAL, but usually if there's no existing legal definition, courts first look to the word's usual and ordinary meaning, which is to say, basically the dictionary definition. So even if they went with that definition over the Vegan Society's, it would at the very least contain no parts of animals, or secretions thereof.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

I've also heard something along those lines. Or the other thing is that it is apparently super hard to make sure that everything in the process is 100% vegan. Even if an ingredient is technically "vegan", the way it is produced is not automatically. For instance a lot of refined sugar use bone char to filter and bleach it.