101 Things

[bugshaw]

101 Things in 101 Days

68. Eat vegan for a week
Done - as in a committed attempt was made (though it fell short by 3 hours as it was raining and lunchtime my back hurt and we'd sat down in a Chinese restaurant and I just had stuff from the buffet). I learnt more about how difficult it can be to identify vegan packet food without some sort of special decoder for the ingredients list, and that some vegans avoid sugar which has been refined using bone (this distinction tends not to be made on packets, which simply list "sugar"). I suspect I ate some animal-processed sugar during this week.

It was easy enough to cook for myself, but harder to eat out, and I could have tried more of a challenge.

So, what have I found out about my staple foods?

Good
Diet Cherry Coke
Co-op mincemeat (nice with baked apple)
Antidepressants
Rice/peanut crackers

Bad
Salad cream (eggs)
Sandwich spread (eggs)
Jaffa cakes (eggs)
Contraceptive pill (lactose)
Calcium capsules (gelatin)
Multivitamins (beeswax)

56. Drink more tea (currently one cup/week despite the array of interesting coloured packets in the cupboard). DONE.
I've had a cup most days, it's quite pleasant but I'm not developing a habit, and might switch now to "Boil fewer kettles" :-)

Comments

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Assuming you did not spend any of the week in North America, you can be pretty sure your sugar was vegan.

Non-vegan sugar?

[jinty]

Blimey, you learn a new thing every day - never heard of this one! But then I'm not a vegan.

Apparently bone char "is not used in making white beet sugar and it is not used in making raw cane sugar." according to the SKIL (Sugar Knowledge International - !) website.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Most British sugar is beet sugar -- and it's marked "beet" or "cane", and it's better to buy beet for carbon-miles and local buying reasons anyway. Beet sugar isn't bone refined.

(Not a vegetarian, but lived with one for years and years.)

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

I spent a good part of my childhood summers in Norfolk, tromping across sugar beet fields on long muddy walks :-)

[techiebabe.livejournal.com]

I've been veggie for over 20 years and *I* didn't know about the sugar thing.

(I don't like drinks that have been processed using non-veggie finings either, although again due to labelling it's hard to stick to that.)

[techiebabe.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, medicines are difficult. Where it's over the counter, I get veggie / vegan ones. Where it's prescribed I have to accept gelatine which really annoys me - one of my regular (3 x daily) meds is in a gelatine capsule. It doesn't come in any other format :(

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I haven't checked the omeprazole (and I couldn't stop taking it anyway), but otherwise I'm gelatine-free meds-wise, because a lot fewer medicines are wrapped up in gelatine than used to be the case.

[anef.livejournal.com]

Ah, I wondered in what world Diet Cherry Coke could possibly be regarded as Good, but it's with reference to veganism. OK.