Linda McCartney Vegetarian Sausages from Woolworths

I was browsing through the local Woolworths one day and noticed vegan sausages on sale. These are made by Linda McCartney and these sausages are suitable for vegans, meaning they have no meat, no dairy, no eggs.

Six sausages cost about $6, so that is about $1 per sausage. This strikes me as expensive, but I'm not too sure what the market price of sausages are given I don't normally buy or eat sausages.



I checked the ingredients and noticed it was mostly made from wheat protein. It is also soy free. The protein percentage at 22% is quite high. As a comparison, chicken is 27% protein.



I had the sausages cooked up with a salad. When I first saw the sausages, I was concerned about how rough the surface of the sausages were. Normally sausages are smooth.



Even since I became vegan, I've never had sausages, so this was a big moment for me! In fact, when I was a meat eater, sausages were my favourite food. If there is anything I hated about meat, it's bone. Fish was the worst because often fish is laced with small bones. I'd have nightmares about getting small bits of bone lodged in my throat and I'd need to get my neck cut open in a hospital to remove the bone. Lamb or beef was usually too hard for my teeth to tear. Chicken was usually dry. Sausages, on the other hand, were uniform and because they were packed with herbs and maybe some other questionable chemicals (such as ammonia and nitrates) they tasted good.



When I tasted the vegan sausages, I was surprised at how good they were. If I were to serve this to most people, I'd be sure most of then would not know that it is meatless.

The texture was very nice. It has a very nice sausage-like taste.





Eating a salad with vegan meat was very nice. I think there is something very satisfying about having something warm (sausages) mixed with something cold (salads).

Most people, in my opinion, do not want animals to suffer. This is why slaughterhouses are hidden. People do not want to look at the atrocities that occur in these factories. However, people often want warm food that is high in calories and meat is the cheapest, tastiest, and most convenient product for that.

However, vegan meat, in my opinion, is now tasty enough that most people would switch if the product were more widely available, if it were marketed better, and if it were cheap enough.

One reason why vegan meat is not cheap is because few of it is sold. For companies to make back their expenses on low quantity sold, they need to raise prices. Vegans should support vegan meat producers because more demand for their product should increase competition, lower prices, and bring vegan meats into the mainstream.

Another problem vegan meat faces is the fact that the meat and dairy industries in many countries are heavily subsidised by governments. A significantly amount of taxpayer money goes towards propping up the meat and dairy industry ($38 billion in America alone). This is a problem that needs to be fixed at the political level. When you vote, think of the animals.