The back of a package of Upton’s chorizo seitan says “vegan & plant-based”. I’ve talked with a couple people about this before: plant-based isn’t inherently vegan, but there are only a very select few implausible ways to get food that’s (varying degrees of debatably) vegan and not plant-based. We’re talking, like, accidental roadkill, a hamburger you found in the trash, an animal killed in a dire survival situation… (Edit: Okay, I guess pure salt as a meal also applies.)
So Upton’s, I’m really glad you reassured me that it’s both.
Oreos are vegan. Vegan doesn’t inherently mean plant-based.
Well what are oreos made of, if not plants? Do you think they just appear out of the air?
Obviously oreos are hyper processed and no longer bear much resemblance to plants, but ultimately they are made of plant stuff.
… What on Earth do you think Oreos are made from? Plant-based simply means “not made from animal products” (because other organisms like fungi are called “plant-based”, and we don’t normally eat rocks or food conjured from the aether), and in this case, that distinction doesn’t even matter, since the ingredients almost all come from plants (with exceptions like salt). We’re not talking about “whole foods plant-based”; we’re just talking about plant-based.
If anything, more hardline vegans would argue that Oreos are plant-based but not vegan due to their use of palm oil and sugar refined using bone char. But they’re absolutely plant-based.
Have not heard The Bone Char in Oreos, Does that comes in the Calcium Phosphate?
No, the calcium phosphate is a leavening agent. The bone char doesn’t make it into the final product. Oreos use cane sugar which is (sometimes, not always, depending on the sugar supplier) filtered through bone char – charred animal bones. Most vegans would probably be more worried about the palm oil, but “dead animal parts were directly used in making this” isn’t helping Oreos’ case.
I avoid Oreos for my health and for the palm oil issue, and I feel better knowing I’m avoiding the bone char too. However, the bone char problem is a lot less tractable generally because, well… you basically can’t avoid it outside the things you cook.
That reddit post is confusing,
So only in The USA is using bone char a part of the sugar process? So if it is labelled Organic, then bone char was not used in the sugar process? How does that make sense? Bone Char is not organic? So contact sugar manufacturers to find out facilities that does not use bone char & “ check the production code / facility” on the packaging for those facilities’ numbers, before deciding on sugar to buy?
Do all the sugars’ processing require bone char? Like Cane or Agave Or liquid?
Of course though that is all sugars NOT in or mixed with another product or ingredient. Sugars & salts are everywhere.
It’s not really a USA thing as such, it’s because cane sugar is more common in the US while e.g. Europe primarily uses beet sugar. Beet sugar is lighter and needs less refining to make it white, so bone char is basically never used for beet sugar. The same applies to Agave too. And to HFCS.
For liquid sugar it depends on what sugar it was made from, it can be made from cane sugar but also from beet sugar.
Organic sugar doesn’t use bone char in the US because USDA doesn’t allow animal derived processing aids for organic products.
We do normally eat rocks; we literally need the flavour rock to live.
No, I get that, but few people are going around eating pure salt in appreciable quantities, and plant-based food with a non-life-threatening proportion of salt mixed in is still plant-based (see, e.g., soy sauce, whose proportion actually can be life-threatening). When I said “we don’t normally eat rocks”, the implication was “we don’t normally eat rocks as a meal unto themselves”.
The broader point being that edge cases for “vegan and not plant-based” food are functionally non-existent.
I stopped eating Oreos, but never ate many, because processed & sugary, thus not good for us.
I do not get it Palm Oil comes a plant & thus, it is Vegan. How would it not be Vegan?
I do not eat Palm Oil, because it is horrible for The Living Earth & All Living Beings that lose their lands to new plams groves.
You’re totally right that they’re awful for you. They’re functionally just saturated fat (disproportionate to the mono- and polyunsaturated fats), complex carbs, sodium, and nothing else.
Even excluding human rights abuses, modern palm oil production is almost comically unethical. It sustains itself by destroying the environment, prominently including mass-deforestation in the tropics – inflicting cruelty on an unimaginable scale to the native wildlife and, in some cases, even threatening their extinction. Veganism is:
So you can see how vegans often not just try to avoid it but may even consider it non-vegan.
Palm oil frequently requires a lot of death and destruction.