Pork in my cereal bar – why didn’t you tell me?

Being a vegetarian for years, I was shocked to see that (a few years ago) Lea & Perrins stated their Worcestershire Sauce was vegetatian, despite having fish juice in it!!! Needless to say I wrote to them, along with many other vegeratians I told, furious. After a bitter, protracted argument, we were successful and they removed this statement. I would like to think it was down to us complaining, however I have a feeling it could also have been down to the Food Standards Agency and Advertising Standards Authority.

Sweets is a big issue, shops who sell steamed puddings often put beef suet in them,. This is also an issue with restaurants, when selling sweets, as nowhere on the menu does it state they are not vegetarian. Jelly is another one, with vegegel, or other around, why use gelatine??

I check everything (if possible) and if I am still unsure, I will not buy it.

Sorry, as you can tell, I am quite passionate about this, so I will get off my soapbox.

Upon discovery many of my vegetarian drinkers where shocked to discover that the following beers: ‘Fosters’, ‘Estrella’, ‘Sol’, ‘Red Stripe’ and ‘Carling Black Label’, and the ciders ‘Strongbow’ and ‘Bulmers Original’ all use animal products.

Unfortunately this is something that can’t be easily found or stated at a bar.

I dislike all red meat except minimal-fat Gammon and that has to be very well cooked (most would say burned) before I’ll eat it. That’s purely a choice of taste issue, nothing to do with dietary requirements or religion or p;political beliefs.

I do however eat fish – indeed I could not possibly cope without it – and eggs, including duck eggs.

I was astounded, though, at work when I recently say that fishcakes were on offer – very rare in our place – so looked up the price on the menu board only to find that the were the “VEGETARIAN dish of the day”. I approached the catering manager who could not understand why fish-cakes were not vegetarian.

I should not have been surprised at her level of ignorance as last year a Muslim member fo staff complained that the Halal sticker had been placed on all Ham sandwiches. The catering manager’s response was to say that she would make sure she bought Halal Ham in future!!!!!

With levels of ignorance such as these and those reported by other contributors above around it is hardly surprising that some vegetarians don’t think to check ingredients lists on products that at first glance don’t appear to be meat products.

All that said, in many cases there is no need for the meat product to be within items such as cereal bars – it’s purely to make it cheaper to make and increase the profit margin.

Some items, however, have always been made with meat content since they were invented – for example suet pudding. I know we have vegetable suet these days and I use that a lot, but suet is, by definition, grated beef fat and traditional recipe suet pudding will de facto have beef suet in it.

Regular readers who have seen my posts on other convo’s will be aware that my favourite saying is “Caveat Emptor” [buyer beware] – and this is simple another example of where buyers need to be savvy to avoid making a mistake. (Whether the buyer SHOULD HAVE to beware is quite another debate!)

I suggest looking at this from another perspective. The condemned product has a list of ingredients and anyone who wants to avoid any of these ingredients simply has to look at the list.

I am more concerned about products such as wines and ‘home-made’ foods where there is no list of ingredients. That gives plenty of opportunity to add all sorts of unexpected ingredients.

…and sugar is often whitened with bone char from cattle. Eek.