“I Would Go Vegan but I Can’t Give Up Meat, Cheese and Chocolate.”
Would you go vegan if you didn’t have to give up either meat, cheese or chocolate? Or maybe the thought of giving up all three is just too unbearable!
Well, the good news is, with today’s amazing alternatives, you can still enjoy the taste of your favourite foods without harming animals, your health or the health of the planet.
Compromise for compassion
Let’s get real. Whilst a lot of the plant-based alternatives now taste exactly like their animal-based counterparts, some may not be quite such an exact match. Here, it’s useful to remember a couple of things.
Firstly, even if a product – let’s say vegan bacon – doesn’t taste exactly like traditional bacon made from pigs, it can still make a delicious bacon butty. What’s more, your taste buds will quickly adapt and where you used to crave animal flesh dripping in saturated fat, you’ll begin instead to crave the more compassionate, yet still tasty, option.
Secondly, alternatives to meat and dairy are constantly in development and they’re getting more convincing all the time. There are enough out there that even if some don’t tickle your taste buds, others will. But that’s probably true of all the foods you eat anyway. Do you like every brand and type of cheese, or every single type of chocolate? Or do you have preferences?
And there is another option: you don’t have to eat either. Some people might not ever like the taste of vegan cheese so they decide to go without because their morals become more important than their taste buds.
Alternatives to meat
Long gone are the days when vegans had to settle for a crumbly bean burger every time they ventured out for a pub lunch. In the last five years, the alt-meat market has exploded, giving us so many mock meats to choose from.
Most supermarkets now offer vegan burgers, steaks, sausages, chicken nuggets, schnitzels, fish fingers, deli slices… the list goes on.
With many of these alternatives you’ll struggle to tell the difference between the plant-based version and the meat version.
And even if there is a difference, not everything needs to taste exactly like meat to hit the same spot.
Take a look at some of the easy swaps for meat.
Alternatives to cheese
So many vegetarians and omnivores tell us: “I would go vegan, but I couldn’t give up cheese!”. Don’t worry, we totally understand! Cheese addiction is real – thankfully, once you break free from it, the cravings stop.
What makes cheese so addictive is the extremely high concentration of the milk protein casein that, when digested, results in casomorphins.
Casomorphins are addictive and if you suddenly stop eating cheese, you might experience uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms and strong cravings. However, it doesn’t take long for these feelings to go away, and you can make the transition easier by replacing cheese in your diet with plant-based cheeses.
Vegan cheese gets a bad rap because when it first hit the supermarket shelves it was, let’s say, not the best-tasting alternative to dairy cheese. Nowadays, however, you would often be hard pressed to tell the difference!
From cheddar to mozzarella, to brie, to feta, there’s a vegan cheese for you. But as with everything, you might need to taste around to find your favourite.
Some melt better so are more suited to pizzas and toasties, while others are better suited for a ploughman’s sandwich, or enjoyed on a cracker.
Choose life, choose chocolate
Perhaps the very easiest of replacements is chocolate. There is absolutely no shortage of chocolate in the cupboards of most vegan kitchens. If anything, going vegan will actually level-up your chocolate game.
It’s not the dairy content of chocolate that makes it delicious, it’s the quality of the cocoa butter. While many standard chocolate brands use inferior cocoa butter and other cheap ingredients, a lot of vegan chocolates, like Booja Booja, only use high quality ingredients.
Good dark chocolates are often ‘accidentally vegan’ (meaning they might not be marketed as vegan but if you check the ingredients they contain no animal products) but if you prefer milk chocolate, we’ve got you covered.
Vego makes a phenomenal vegan milk chocolate hazelnut bar, and the creaminess of Ombar’s Coco Mylk is second to none. You can even buy vegan KitKats and Galaxy bars now!
Whatever your taste in chocolate, no compromise is necessary when you go vegan.
Take a look at more easy swaps for chocolate.
So, fear not. When you go vegan, you don’t have to give up meat, cheese and chocolate. You just have to pick up a plant-based version from the shelf in the supermarket!
