Nature's Cuppa Rich Roast - Better than Decaf

Woolworths now sell Nature's Cuppa Rich Roast, which tastes like instant coffee but is actually made from barley, chicory root and other plant ingredients. It is significantly cheaper than the real decaf coffees. What I like about it is I can drink it at night and not worry about my sleep.

Quorn Vegan Nuggets Available at Woolworths

Quorn has long been renowned for making vegetarian meat made from mycoprotein, which is derived from fungus.



Quorn is normally vegetarian and not vegan because it contains egg whites. However, recently Quorn has produced a number of vegan products that are now available at Woolworths around Australia.



Quorn Vegan Nuggets are made in the United Kingdom and are free from soy.  The ingredients are below.







My verdict on the product after eating it is that it is too dry, although eating it with avocado seems to help as it adds creaminess.

Nudie Coconut Yoghurt

I purchased coconut yoghurt (spelled "yogurt" in the US) from Woolworths a few days ago. At first, I didn't like the taste but over time I started to like it. It definitely has a coconut taste. The ingredient list also claims that it contains "cultures" so you'd be eating good bacteria as you would with dairy yoghurt.

It's winter here in Australia, so eating coconut yoghurt is not ideal. I prefer to eat baked beans, but I haven't seen vegan coconut yoghurt in the supermarket before, so I felt I had to give it a try.



Given it is made of coconut, it is low carb, low protein, and high in fat, and the fat in the coconut yoghurt is mostly saturated fat, so if you care about heart disease then you may want to eat this in moderation. Mainstream dairy yoghurt such as Yoplait contains less than 2% fat whereas this coconut yoghurt has 14% fat. However, mainstream diary yoghurt is higher in carbs and higher in protein.

According to government guidelines, you should be eating about 20% of your calories from fat anyway. A diet high in vegetables and fruit (rather than nuts and seeds) would naturally be low in fat, so throwing in fatty vegan food can help increase your fat intake. Other good sources of vegan fat are avocados, peanut butter, as well as other nuts and seeds.

There is a popular misconception that a vegan diet is low in fat and high in carbs, and many people who criticize the vegan diet criticize it for its low fat levels (that is, not reaching the 20% fat recommended by health authorities). A vegan diet can be low in fat, but it all depends on what you eat. An omnivore diet filled with low-fat milk, lean meat, and low-fat yoghurt can have lower fat than a vegan diet filled with avocados, peanut butter, macadamia nuts, coconut yoghurt, etc.

Am I Vegan Enough?

I've run out of almond milk. It's night and I'm about to go to bed. At night, I always drink milk because I cannot sleep with an empty stomach, and my tummy rumbles in the middle of the night.

I used to drink dairy milk at night, but since I've become vegan I now drink almond milk, and I don't drink unsweetened almond milk because I like to drink something sweet (sweetened almond milk still contains less sugar than dairy milk). I really don't like the taste of soy milk by itself, so even though there's plenty of soy milk in the house, I didn't want to drink it, so I decided to just put on some jeans, walk out of the house, and go to the local Woolworths to buy some almond milk.

It takes me less than five minutes to drive to my local Woolworths, so it wasn't a big deal. While there, I saw many people doing late night grocery shopping, and many of them were buying dairy milk, which disappointed me. I hate the dairy industry. I wish I could destroy all dairy farms on earth.

While at the supermarket, I not only purchased two cartons of almond milk but also purchased two boxes of Linda McCartney vegan sausage rolls, which were discounted. I love these sausage rolls! They are super delicious.

While shopping, I kept thinking about veganism. Veganism is always on my mind. I think I've become absolutely obsessive about it. I think about it all the time. It's the only thing that gives me any meaning in life now. I have nothing else to live for. Nothing else matters when there's a holocaust happening. The scale of animals being killed is so enormous that it eclipses any possible trivial issue I as an individual may have, whether it's me caring about what other people think of my clothes or my car or whether I should get married or not. Veganism gives you perspective on what really is trivial in your life. 

I need to do everything I can, which of course means I should be a good vegan and consume lots of vegan products, from vegan food to vegan clothes. I need to boycott the industries that exploit animals.

But is this enough? What else can I do? Should I do something political? Should I start a vegan business? If something matters so much to me, I want to do it to the extreme. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing to the extreme.

Aldi Sells Cage Eggs in Australia

Update May 2016: Aldi has listened to customers and has now phased out cage eggs.

In Australia, supermarkets are normally a duopoly between Australian retailers Coles and Woolworths. However, things are changing. I have been shopping at Coles and Woolworths for many decades and suddenly there are foreign discount retailers like Costco and Aldi.

I remember visiting Aldi maybe a year ago and was shocked at how plain the place was. I admit I was a bit of an elitist and was turned off by the sort of people who shopped at Aldi. They seemed to do all their shopping on the weekend and when they shopped they purchased everything in bulk whereas I was there to just buy one box of tea.

My father also didn't seem to be a fan of Aldi, saying they didn't offer good brands. He also claims that whenever there are discounts offered at Coles and Woolworths, the prices are often cheaper than that found in Aldi or Costco.

Nevertheless, I decided to give Aldi a try. I went there and purchased almond milk and soy milk. I was surprised at the cost. One liter of almond milk was A$2.19 and and one liter of soy milk was A$1.09. This was about two to three times cheaper than the almond and soy milks in Coles and Woolworths.

Aldi also seems to be vegetarian and vegan friendly. Virtually all their products had vegetarian or vegan labeling on them, making them easy to identify.

I don't drink much soy milk. I used to believe that soy was filled with estrogen and would give me manboobs, but after looking deeply into the soy and estrogen issue, I started to believe that soy was safe (see Does Soy Phytoestrogen Give You Manboobs?).

So I was a convert. I started buying almond milk from Aldi. I was annoyed that Aldi applied a surcharge if you used PayPass as I am effectively cashless nowadays and I was unhappy with withdrawing cash, handling dirty notes, and keeping coins in my pocket (Coles and Woolworths do not charge a surcharge for use of PayPass). However, I have since found that if you buy products carefully, the surcharge on PayPass or other credit card transactions can actually be less than the rounding up, so if you really want to save money, you need to make sure you pay in cash and make sure that you purchase an amount that ensures there is rounding down. I may write a separate post on this topic as I don't want to go into too much detail here.

Recently, Aldi has been criticized for using cage eggs rather than free range eggs and not committing to reduce or phase out cage eggs at all. In fact, Coles and Woolworths have made commitments to reduce or phase out cage eggs. This issue has blown up on the media.

So this presents me with a tricky situation. I love Aldi, and they have lots of vegan options. They also have good prices on products. I don't eat eggs at all, even free range eggs. However, animal welfare is amount making incremental improvements, so moving from cage eggs to free range eggs is a step in the right direction, but even in farms with free range eggs, male chicks are thrown into blenders alive because they don't lay eggs.

Ever since this issue came up, I have not purchased any milk from Aldi, but I have set up a Google Alert to keep me updated on the issue because I will go back to Aldi if they commit to improving animal welfare. Whenever I go to Coles or Woolworth and look at the price of soy milk or almond milk, it seems as if the prices have gone up even higher. My guess is that I am not the only one suddenly buying vegan milk from Coles and Woolworths rather than Aldi, and Coles and Woolworth see an opportunity to raise prices because customers who buy for ethics are often very willing to pay extra.

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.