

Laboratory tests of vegan restaurants in LA find some aren't - mariorz
http://www.quarrygirl.com/2009/06/28/undercover-investigation-of-la-area-vegan-restaurants/

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ankhmoop
The subject matter is interesting, but what I find most interesting is a blog
performing real, 'hard-hitting' local journalism, of genuine interest to a
very specific social subgroup.

~~~
dag
The mainstream media had this idea first, they picked up the story of the New
York highschool student who tested Red Snapper in various sushi restaurants
and found that it was often Talapia.

That story got repeated in some jurisdictions, now a year or so later someone
gets around to doing it with vegan food.

\-----

EDIT:

Sushi from New York:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/science/22fish.html?scp=3&...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/science/22fish.html?scp=3&sq=red%20snapper%20talapia&st=cse)

Sushi from Toronto (reported in Vancouver):
[http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=4381b...](http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=4381b239-db40-47da-
ae6b-b573bc5dc72c)

~~~
pyre
If you really want a "what food is advertised as isn't what it really is"
story search youtube for Vegan Marshmallows. (short: some guy was supplying a
'vegan' gelatin substitute to several groups (not just vegans) and when it was
tested it had animal products in it and the guy 'disappeared').

Revealing that some companies/restaurants aren't always truthful isn't a new
thing. Certainly not only a year old. It's really as old as investigative
journalism in general. Dating all the way back to "The Jungle".

Edit: and what you're really saying is that 'mainstream media' just copied the
idea too. And from a grassroots-level at that.

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dtf
As a non-vegan, these recipes truly baffle me. Why on earth would anyone eat
that? Surely there are some nice, simple dishes you can make using fruits and
nuts and vegetables, rather than these massively processed soy products
pretending to be meat or fish or cheese? Seriously, what's the point?

~~~
theorique
I'm a vegan primarily for health reasons, so I generally agree with you. I eat
mostly 'plant-based whole foods', in the words of Joi Ito.

At the same time, it's nice to be able to eat a variety of foods. Some people
who are vegans primarily for ethical reasons rather than health or taste
reasons may miss meat and/or cheese a lot (especially in the early stages). In
this case, these products provide a substitute for the foods that they may
remember and enjoy but no longer choose to eat.

~~~
aristus
Doug Coupland called these kinds of people "crypto-carnivore". :)

I enjoy meat and veggie food but I draw the line at egg and milk substitutes.
Real vegan cheese is _appalling_ and no amount of processing can make up for
it. "Soy" cheese that uses milk protein is much better... and there are a lot
more simple vegetarians than radical-Shiite vegans. Nor is there always a
bright line. I have heard good arguments over whether honey is or is not
vegan.

------
shaunxcode
This is going to have some pretty big reprecussions for the restaurants in
question. A few years back the same thing happened on the east coast when
someone ate a vegan philly "cheese" steak at a vegan joint and swore down that
it could NOT be vegan. They ordered one to go and utilized their campus
laboratory to discover that, yes, it had casein in it. Turned out that the
supplier of the restaurants vegan cheese had not been entirely honest. It
looks like the same thing is happening with a lot of these cases. Most people
source their vegan "meats" from central import supermarkets and the people
doing the translation seem to be leaving out a few crucial facts i.e. "this
vegetarian fish contains fish" etc.

This is another great reason to source your food locally. When you are having
to trace the contents of what is going into your mouth across state borders
let alone oceans you're going to have some difficulty.

One of my long term plans is to open a restaurant which sources _everything_
locally (with in the county) - it will be inherently vegan but will not
champion that so as to not turn people off of the concept but rather push the
idea of healthy food supporting local business and thus the overall food
security for the community.

~~~
pyre
It's actually better to eat food that is _seasonal_ than local. Case in point,
if you buy local tomatoes during the winter they are grown in a greenhouse
that burns more energy than shipping tomatoes up from Mexico.

I recently found out that most (maybe all?) rice that's grown in California is
grown in an area where they need to pump the water uphill to irrigate that
area. Energy/greenhouse gas-wise it's more environmentally-friendly to import
the rice from India.

Load of people seem to think that 'local' implies something like a small town
and therefore must be better and/or closer to the earth or something, but
that's not always the case.

~~~
shaunxcode
I agree about seasonal eating patterns and I guess that is implicit if you are
eating local organic (i.e. no crazy hydroponic winter tomatoes). Living in
utah that would mean the winters would bring a lot of grains, canned/bottled
fruit and vegetables from the growing season etc. How does a fresh vegetable
stew with some home made bread not sound good?

On rice - I actually tried growing rice in my apartment using 5 gallon buckets
one suspended in the other so that there is a constant supply of water in the
bottom (I think the term is self watering container). I just threw in some
soil and tossed a hand full of organic brown rice and it sprouted within the
week! I am not sure how much I could have grown had I taken it past that point
but I was surprised that it even sprouted!

~~~
pyre
That's actually pretty cool that your tried to grow your own rice. My comment
is mainly because I know there are a lot of people out there with only partial
knowledge of the reasons behind things like 'local'. Some people think "it's
not being shipped in from Mexico or Columbia so it's obviously not using as
much energy" while others just do it to try and support local business. But
that first group is grossly misinformed.

------
grandalf
Casein is a huge problem. I went to the nearest grocer (a Safeway) and looked
at the ingredients in all of the "vegan" cheeses and psudo-meats. All
contained casein or some ambiguously named "milk protein".

Also, soy protein (isolate and concentrate) is harmful and is contained in a
wide variety of additional vegan foods:

<http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2005nl/april/050400pusoy.htm>

Bottom line: For best results eat foods in their natural state or as close as
possible, with minimal processing.

~~~
viggity
I'm assuming by "best results" you mean "the greatest probability of not
consuming any animal products whatsoever"

For the "best results nutritionally", you're probably better of eating animal
products, including ones that have been cooked.

[http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2008/09/15/he_co...](http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2008/09/15/he_cooked_up_a_new_theory_on_evolution/)

~~~
grandalf
Quite the contrary (that research makes the common logical error of assuming
that just because something may have conferred a selection advantage over eons
of evolution, that it does so today in a world with no calorie/nutrient
scarcity). See the following thread and article:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=676446>

and

[http://www.amazon.com/China-Study-Comprehensive-Nutrition-
Im...](http://www.amazon.com/China-Study-Comprehensive-Nutrition-
Implications/dp/1932100660/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246301048&sr=8-1)

------
biotech
I have been on a "gluten-free" diet for a couple years now. This means that I
have to carefully inspect the ingredients list of everything I eat, something
that I didn't really do before. The results are unappetizing to say the least.
Even worse, sometimes potentially harmful ingredients are not necessarily
listed, or are listed by some rarely-known name.

If you wish to have good control over what you're eating, whether that means
avoiding gluten, casein, animal products, soy, etc; your best bet is to
prepare all of your own food. Don't eat out, don't buy preprepared foods at
the market.

Disclaimer: I'm not quite disciplined enough to follow that advice, and I know
that I end up eating small amounts of gluten. It's a trade off between stress
and nutrition, I guess. Since vegans usually don't get sick by eating trace
amounts of non-vegan food, my advice is to just deal with it. And be happy
that you don't have a lot of real food allergies (unless you do, of course).

~~~
pyre
I guess the 'real' issue here is whether or not restaurants are knowingly
using non-vegan ingredients and lying to their customers (i.e. committing
fraud) just to turn a buck.

Restaurants lying about what is really in their food should tick _everyone_
off vegan or non.

------
buugs
Vegan and vegetarian always fascinated me why do they, or you if you are among
them, seek out normal foods that should not fit their diet, such as lets say
vegetarian hamburgers bacon etc.

Or even from the article why are they searching out quesadillas, cheese pizza,
pancakes things that me seem to clearly not be vegan other than that they may
have found a way to make remnants of them.

It just seems counter-cause to me.

~~~
moted
What makes a pancake inherently something 'not vegan'? The ethical concerns
which led me to veganism in no way removed pancakes from my desired diet. As
such, I make them on a regular basis.

Just because somebody doesn't eat meat doesn't mean they don't like the
concept of the meal in general. I make vegan versions of tacos, hamburgers,
chicken salad, and egg salad because I like everything else about the meal
other than the animal product. If I can substitute the animal for a plant
based alternative I can enjoy the meals I've always loved, why wouldn't I?

~~~
buugs
pancakes: milk and eggs is why i say it isn't vegan from the pictures the
vegan pancakes are not what I would call pancakes and maybe there is another
way to make them though

I can understand lets say tofu salad or tacos, things that the meat isnt
really the ruling taste I do not understand tofu burgers, cheese pizza,
quesadillas.

Thank you for your reasons though.

~~~
inc
For pancakes, you can use soy/rice milk and substitute apple sauce for the
eggs - this works in most baked foods also.

~~~
pyre
Before my wife went vegan, we never had milk/whole milk around the house and
soy/rice/almond milk works in pancakes even when using eggs.

------
wooster
This reminds me of the schoolgirls in New Zealand who tested Ribena and found
it contained almost no Vitamin C:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/mar/27/schoolsworldwide...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/mar/27/schoolsworldwide.foodanddrink)

~~~
rubikscube
If people ate 9 to 12 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, or better yet,
ate only/mostly fruits and vegetables as their entire diet, they wouldn't
think they need supplements like Ribena to get their Vitamin C, as well as a
host of other nutrients.

~~~
paragatelatte
Man,there are a lot of raw foodists chiming in on this article.

------
jrockway
I'm not vegan, but now I have to wonder what contaminants are in my food.

~~~
JimmyL
Have a read of _The Omnivore's Dilemma_ by Michael Pollan, and you'll be
wondering even more.

I'm not a vegetarian or vegan (meat is too tasty), but that book in many ways
changed how I shop for food.

------
tdavis
Why would a vegan blog do this in the first place? Presumably the vast
majority of vegans are so for ethical reasons; they can't possibly be allergic
to anything that has once been part of an animal. In which case, veganism (?)
is basically the definition of "what you don't know can't hurt you."

I applaud the blog for their investigative journalism, but all they've really
done is taken restaurant choices away from a group that already has a smaller
number of places to eat.

Right? Am I missing something?

~~~
pyre
What about people that are vegan/vegetarian for ethical and/or religious
reasons? While it won't 'kill' them, people are making money by lying about a
product to their customers (fraud). Is this a good thing?

Wouldn't you feel pretty violated if you thought that you were making an
ethical choice, only to have the person helping turn out to be a cheat? (e.g.
killing someone to put them out of the misery only to find out that they still
had a desire/will to live)

An even better example would be if you were boycotting the RIAA by buying
music from an independent label that claimed they weren't part of the RIAA.
Only to find out that .5% of their profits really _were_ going to the RIAA.
Wouldn't you feel violated if all that time you thought that you were doing a
good thing boycotting the industry, but you weren't entirely? Obviously it's
better than if you were buying directly from big name labels like Sony,etc but
you're still going to be pissed off at being misled.

------
pmorici
I wonder how many vegans and vegetarians are also pro-choice and how they
reconcile that inconsistency.

~~~
pyre
I debated whether or not to respond since you just sound like flame bait, but
I guess I'll respond...

Vegan/vegetarian is a description of a diet, _NOT_ a philosophy. People can go
vegan or vegetarian for a number of reasons: 1\. boycott poor treatment of
animals in the livestock industry 2\. health concerns and/or allergies 3\.
dieting/losing weight 4\. ethical concerns (not wanting to kill things) 5\.
religious practices

I'm sure there are many more. Pro-choice does not necessarily run counter to
any/all of those. But even if you don't agree with someone's decision you can
agree that they had a right to make it, no?

Edit: Just to add that years ago 'vegetarian' used to describe what 'vegan'
now describes. But there are a lot of people nowadays that have given up meat,
but not eggs/dairy so 'vegetarian' as a term has grown to largely describe
those people.

~~~
pmorici
Well, the thought just popped into my head because of the sites subtitle "meat
is murder" (clearly someone who is vegan by reason #4) and the fact that the
article deals with establishments in L.A. which people generally tend to
associate with a less conservative political view.

------
tel
Concerns about the results aside I found it wonderful that the people who
carried out the experiment, while not producing a bulletproof scientific
analysis, were very thorough and kept to the stated aim to have a fair
scientific trial. Blinded randomization, repeated measurements, and further
information about those tests would have been interesting to see, but the
article manages to largely avoid jumping to unwarranted conclusions. They
asked a fair question; performed systematic, documented experiments; and then
produced compelling research to support their theory.

Altogether it's a testament to using science to explore everyday questions.

------
whatusername
Reminds me of this story:
[http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN26324168...](http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN2632416820070326)
(Where two teenage girls found out that Ribena (Blackcurrent) Juice didn't
contain any Vitamin C - despite advertisements to the contrary. GSK eventually
admitted 15 breaches of the NZ Fair Trading Act.

------
cmars232
<http://failblog.org/2009/06/29/bulletin-board-win/>

