Goooooooooooodddd moooorrrnniiingggg Vietnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam!

My tarantula recently molted its exoskeleton and look so lovely and bright. She did it after only a month of her being here. Anyway, topic of the day is being a vegan once again!

In England we have a supermarket beginning with Co and ending in Op. Now, I do use this regularly. However since new year began I noticed they are now stocking this new brand/range of plant based products. Those products are in fact for Vegans.

So I took a fancy to them being vegan and all. I decided to analyse deeply the packaging and presentation. Immediately I could see the food stuff was a lot smaller than comparable meat products and at premium prices. This is a NEW BRAND which I have not encountered before, and I suspect a new company. So well done for getting your products into the big supermarket already. After some sneaky research into this plant based food company, it seems to be a part of the Coop, the very shop it is in.

Now, vegan food producers need to stop charging ridiculous prices when you can get a meat alternative cheaper, and I mean a lot cheaper… 1KG of turkey for £7.99? Yes please. £3.00 for a small wrap which won’t fill you up? Not a chance, although I have been buying them. Yesterday I bought one of their vegan pizzas, and now I am cooking it as I type. You can see the picture of the box at the top of the page. I tried one of their cupcakes, a pack containing 2 which were small but did taste nice.

Yes we want that colourful and fun packaging and we want that plant based alternative vegan food, what we also need is a company to show some originality and understanding of the market. If you are like me you may be sad enough to get excited at the thought of shopping for fresh produce, especially in markets. Most vegans use fresh produce and these sorts of pre packaged goods are okay but usually appeal to people on the go, who have no other choice but to buy because the shop is all meat products and dairy (not uncommon).

Overall the products are good and I think the Coop is doing a good thing by trademarking and incorporating this new set of food stuffs. A lot of big franchises are now doing them too. McDonalds introduced the McPlant, which I must say is good and is value for money. Dominos and Papa Johns both have Vegan pizza and side options. More independent vegan restaraunts are popping up. It is foolish to not offer vegetarian and vegan options nowadays onto the menu of every establishment selling food in England and Wales and Scotland and Ireland.

It’s a fun game to play, until you realise that the market isn’t really catering for vegans, rather, capitalising by giving them highly processed food stuffs for high price mark ups and in return, customers think that they are getting the best in the world and continue to fuel the hypocrisy.

Praise the change from the big franchises offering affordable alternatives, like McDonalds, who I WILL PRAISE. Give a shout out to others like TGI Fridays who are offering vegan options. Come on big food companies! Give us at least one or two options otherwise you won’t make it past 2030!

PLants based peace. xxxx