Soul Vegetarian not vegan?

I thought I would pass on a warning to Vegans who like to eat at the Soul Vegetarian restaurants.

I read a message on a web board from someone in Tallahasse Florida about their local Soul Vegetarian. He discovered that their barbecue sauce contains honey, even though it is labeled as “vegan”.

That doesn’t mean that your local branche(s) of this restaurant do the same, but if you are concerned about avoiding the use of honey you might want to ask about the ingredients of what you are interested in ordering.

The word “vegan” was coined by Donald Watson and his wife in 1947 to refer to the belief ( and practice ) that it is wrong to exploit animals, including food production. Insects, as well as fish, other sea creatures, chickens and other birds are animals.

Granted nobody owns a word, but I think if a word is only 60 years old it is too new for people to redefine it away from its original meaning.

I think if vegans politely ask about the ingredients of food at Soul Vegetarian restaurants and politely educate their local branches about what veganism is, that these restaurants will comply. They tend to be very respectful about people’s beliefs in addition to being talented cooks.

On that same web board I read this information someone mentioned that a similar situation existed in Chicago ended with Soul Vegetarian dropping non-vegan ingredients after local vegans communicated with them.

FYI, FWIW

A pleasant veg surprise today

I had a nice little incident this morning when I went for my vehicle emissions inspection.

While my car was getting tested I had to wait in this little room with a television playing videos about air quality issues. I still had some leaflets explaining the animal agriculture and climate connection leftover from some leafleting I did with FARM (http://www.farmusa.org ) the other weekend. I snagged them out of my car and left them in the waiting room hoping people would read them while their minds were still primed by the motor vehicle associations anti-pollution video.

Once the inspection of my car was done the technician told me that he saw my bumper stickers ( tryveg.com and one about veganism improving global climate issues ). He told me that he was a vegetarian.

I said that it must be cool since it had a connection with his job protecting air quality.

He said “Ah no, I’m a vegetarian for ethical reasons”.

We chatted a bit and I gave him one of the environmental fliers mentioned above.

When I think about all the unexpected dumb comments I get this incident was a nice little surprise that made my day.

🙂

R.I.P Vegetarian Times

Vegetarian Times magazine will be experimenting with changing its name to “Greens” by using that name with the next two issues sold at newsstands.

Their marketing people say it is an attempt to reach a larger, younger, hipper crowd. The current dominant demographic of Vegetarian Times readers are well to do non-vegetarian white women over 50. The environment is hot these days…..literally….ha ha. Brushing a product with green paint ( “green washing” ) is currently a great marketing tool.

Vegetarianism has always been about ethics in regards to animals. Environmental and health justification are new developments. Older friends of mine have told me that when the Vegetarian Times first came out it was about the original “Vegetarianism”.

By the time I started reading the Vegetarian Times in the 1980s it was just starting to move away from animal rights, animal welfare and politically orientated content. It was about where Veg-News magazine is now on the spectrum between content and fluff.

After reading the Vegetarian Times for a few years I got turned off after their lead editor Paul Obis quit. That is, he quit the magazine and vegetarianism writing in his last editorial :

“Twenty years of tofu is enough”

Every few years after that I would peruse the latest issues of the Vegetarian Times while shopping. I saw that it had changed into a gourmet recipe magazine. I started hearing accounts ( true? ) that they started including animal products in their recipes. The staff came out publicly saying that most of their readers were not vegetarians.

I got the feeling years ago that the people who run the Vegetarian Times stopped being interested in helping animals and stopped being interested in vegetarianism. Changing the name to drop “Vegetarianism” only acknowledges the staff’s change of interest and how they want a different magazine.

I like the idea of a vegetarian friendly recipe magazine called “Greens” much better than I like a magazine called “Vegetarian Times” which mentions nothing about helping animals and publishes recipes with meat in it.

Seriously, while I have bad feelings about the people at the Vegetarian Times giving up on their values I think the name change is a good thing as it finally ends an ugly and embarrassing contradiction.

The name change is a good thing.

Checking this blog post in January of 2018 it looks like this change was reversed as the Vegetarian Times is still around.