People love to call veganism ‘privileged,’ while conveniently ignoring the fact that the only reason animal products are even close to being accessible for the average consumer is because they’re factory farmed, slaughtered and packed by grossly underpaid labourers working in dangerous conditions, and then massively subsidised by all of our taxes.
I think in a developed nation, “veganism” almost always connotes some amount of health consciousness, which can be expensive. Different, I imagine, in rice-and-lentils developing parts of the world.
AFAIK Oreos, sour patch kids, taco bell bean burritos, and McD’s French fries are vegan…but they’re not associated with “vegan culture.”
Edit: strike through fries
Quick correction: McD’s fries are vegan everywhere except the US. They use some sort of milk and “natural beef flavoring” in the breading here for some dumb ass reason. In Europe they’re vegan though.
That’s just ridiculous to me. Why? I have had fries plenty of times which were way better than McDonald fries and all they were made of was potatoes, oil, and salt. The perfect French fry doesn’t need anything other than that. It’s all about choosing the right potato variety and then it all comes down to cooking technique.
The fact that McDonald puts anything else in their fries just makes me shake my head.
Usually when things like this happen, its because someone has a buddy that sells something like milk powder, and they’re lining their pockets
McDonalds fries have 19 ingredients, many of them processing chemicals, and one labeled Natural Beef Flavor [wheat And Milk Derivatives]*), they have been sued over it a few times and at various points McD made PR videos showing their fries are safe, so i would imagine it is not actually fit for human consumption Source
ETA: When McD hired Grant Imahara, has very big Kari Byron supporting Big Oil vibes
McDonald’s also fries things in beef tallow, iirc
Edit: after confirming online, there are multiple reports saying that McD’s stopped using animal-based fats for cooking some 5-30 years ago depending on the market (e.g. US, Canada, etc.). The big push to move away from beef tallow in the US was in the '90s, and now McDonald’s confirms that there is beef flavoring in their fries.
Edit 2: and I guess McDonald’s uses mostly a canola-based oil blend, but beef flavoring still goes into the blend.
Edit 3: And looking at the ingredients of the vegetable oil itself, the beef flavorants come from hydrolyzed milk derivatives, so not vegan. Apparently McDonald’s uses different oils for different things, so I wonder if in the future people could ask for the oil without the flavoring.
That used to be true. It is not the case any more. I believe that is why they now add natural beef flavoring to their fries.
Are you vegan, because all of those second paragraph things are associated with veganism.
Well idk about taco bell cause I’m not a seppo but literally when I told me sister I was going vegan and asked if she had advice she said “Sour patch kids and oreos are vegan”
