Top 10 Accidentally Vegan Junk Foods

As a vegan, my diet consists mostly of vegetables, fruits, nuts, and grains. I'm an advocate for eating local, unprocessed foods as much as possible, blah, blah, blah. That's all well and good. But sometimes, I've got to have snacks. Disgusting, over-processed, diabetes-inducing snacks. And thanks to Peta's list of brand-name products that are "accidentally vegan," now I know what my options are.

Below is my list of Top 10 junk foods that are, purely by accident, vegan-friendly.

Photo: blog.nj.com

10) Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs
If I can’t have Reese’s peanut butter cups, I’ll settle for their slightly significantly less exciting younger cousin. In the realm of junk food parading as breakfast cereal - and it’s a surprisingly vast realm - Reese’s (Reese?) is the obese king.

9) Smartie’s
According to my British friends, there is a UK version of Smartie’s that is way more delicious than our version here in the US. Well, those aren’t vegan. Sure, our Smartie’s might not be all that delicious – they might even be the thanks-for-participating prize of choice at pretty much every elementary school spelling bee – but you know what they’re great for? Gluing to a piece of graph paper in color-coordinated rows to learn about fractions.

8) Ghirardelli Hot Chocolate (Double Chocolate)
The chocolate mocha and chocolate hazelnut versions are also accidentally vegan, but if I’m fancy enough to drink Ghirardelli hot chocolate (and snobby enough to pronounce it with a hard “g”), I think I can handle the double chocolate, thank you.

7) Big League Chew
Never mind that the last time I actually purchased a Big League Chew, it was from the snack shack at my middle school baseball field and I was wearing tube socks and Adidas Sambas. Back then, I had no qualms about shoving fistful after fistful of those gooey pick shreds into my mouth, then tipping the bag back and pouring in the rest, so the resulting wad of gum was nearly impossible to manage between my jaws. It's good to know I can relive that experience any time I want.

6) Wheat Thins
Wheat Thins are one of those snacks that you just barely convince yourself are healthy for you to eat an entire box of. They’re basically crackers. They have the word “wheat” in the title! Come on.

5) Fruit by the Foot
In the hierarchy of elementary school cafeteria snack trading, Fruit by the Foot is the bourgeoisie. You could trade up for a Fruit Roll-Up pretty easily (jokes on the wrapper, hello?!), but no way was I going to score a Fruit by the Foot in exchange for the low-fat cheese stick or apple my mom stuck me with.

4) Kellogg’s Unfrosted Poptarts
A lot of people think the best part of poptarts is the frosting. I disagree. I think the best part of poptarts is the goopy, slightly grainy, artificially flavored “fruit” filling that sticks to the roof of your mouth like napalm. Lucky for me, I can have it in fake brown sugar, fake blueberry, or fake strawberry form.

3) Nabisco Oreo Cookies
When I was a kid (and had traded shrewdly that day in the school cafeteria, duping some poor sap into exchanging his Oreos for my chewy granola bar), I used to enjoy Oreo cookies in the most disgusting way imaginable. I would use my front teeth to scrape the crème filling off, and then – rather than just swallowing it – I would collect it from behind my teeth and use my fingers to roll it into a little ball. That ball would grow as I added the filling from three to four cookies, discarding the chocolate cookie part as I went. Then I would pop the huge, spitty crème ball into my mouth and suck on it until it dissolved. I can’t wait to resume this enchanting little ritual as soon as I get my hands on some Oreos.

2) Swedish Fish
Yes! Swedish Fish are the best.

1) Sour Patch Kids
I never understood this snack. Am I really nomming on kid-shaped candies? And what is a sour patch? Is it like a vegetable patch, but instead of vegetables, it grows… sour? Do the candy kids live in the sour patch? How did they get so delicious?

The world may never know. But at least I know what to snack on as I ponder these questions.

Don't Eat Animals (Or Your Husband)

Sometimes I suspect that PETA uses a notification device, much like Batman’s Bat-Signal, to find out about every crazy situation around the world when it happens. That way, nothing crazy can take place without PETA there to jump in, get involved somehow, and up the crazy ante.

Two decades ago, former model Omaima Aree Nelson murdered her husband. Then she cooked and ate parts of his body while wearing red shoes, a red hat, and lipstick. She was convicted and sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison, but now she’s requesting early release.

Photo: bossip.com

Carrie Snider, Special Projects Coordinator at PETA, wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to get her crazy on. So she sent a letter to Warden Lydia Hense of Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla requesting a condition to Nelson’s parole, if it is granted: “Require her to follow a nonviolent, bloodless, vegan diet.” PETA even offered to send Nelson a “starter kit full of flesh-free recipes and helpful tips for making the transition to a nonviolent diet.”

There is one part of the letter that makes a lot of sense to me: if Nelson is not granted parole, PETA suggested that she be fed a vegetarian/vegan diet in prison. That way, her long-term healthcare costs would be reduced and taxpayer money would be saved.

But the cogency is lost amid the craziness.

PETA makes a couple of extreme comparisions, first between Nelson herself and animals: “Animals on factory farms never get a chance at parole because they always get the death penalty”; and then between the butchered animals and Nelson’s butchered husband: “The last thing that a convicted killer and cannibal should be allowed to do is chew on these innocent victims’ body parts.”

The first comparison wrongly (and bizarrely) aligns regular old omnivores who eat factory farm meat with a murderous cannibal. The second undermines the seriousness of Nelson’s mental condition by implying that eating animals is on the same terror-level as eating your husband.

Can veganism prevent and even cure the country’s most common diseases? I think so. But can it cure cannibalism (and whatever mental condition results in cannibalistic acts)? I think not. Obviously, I believe in the sentiment behind a lot of what PETA does. But I don't believe in fighting horror with ridiculousness.

Nevertheless, I will leave you with one heartfelt piece of advice: If you are tempted to put on a red dress, chop up your husband, cook him, and eat him… don’t waste time worrying about whether you ought to maintain a vegan diet. Go get some help.

What Does Test-Tube Meat Mean for Vegans?

Yesterday, Terry Gross’s interview with science writer Michael Specter about so-called “test-tube meat” was featured as part of NPR’s Week of Food on “Fresh Air.” Originally broadcast in May 2011, the interview focuses on Specter’s article in The New Yorker about his visits to laboratories where scientists are developing in vitro meat.

Scientists like Vladimir Mironov (Medical University of South Carolina) and Mark Post (Maastricht University in the Netherlands) are using stem cells from pigs and/or cattle to grow tiny “slabs” of meat in petri dishes filled with nutrient broth. The next step is to use biodegradable scaffolding platforms to turn those cells into muscle tissue, which would be indistinguishable from animal flesh.

Because it would literally be animal flesh – without the animal.

Photo: techblog.dallasnews.com

According to Specter, in vitro meat could improve the world’s hunger problem by providing food for millions without the extensive use of water, grain, and grass that today’s factory farms require. The eventual replacement of farm-grown meat with meat grown in laboratories would also significantly lower the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions.

That all probably sounds wonderful to omnivores, but there’s one big problem: growing meat in labs just seems weird. Specter acknowledges to Gross that “there is something inherently creepy” about it, but points out that “there is something more inherently creepy about the way we deal with the animals that we eat. ... They live a horrible life, and they often die quite cruelly. So the idea of being able to eliminate some of that is extremely exciting for a lot of people.”

That idea certainly is extremely exciting to a lot of people – people like me. In a world where in vitro meat is on the shelves next to farm-grown meat, what happens to vegans?

A lot of us will have identity crises.

Whether we adopt in vitro meat into our diets will depend on the reasons that motivate us to be vegan. Those of us who are vegan mainly for health reasons will continue avoiding meat, whether it comes from a farm or a lab.

But I’m vegan for environmental and economic reasons and because I’m appalled by the animal cruelty that comes hand in hand with the mass production and consumption of animal products. So I’m all for in vitro meat.

PETA’s with me. In a rare instance of being in favor of something, they’re offering $1,000,000 to the first scientist to make lab-grown meat commercially viable.

If a day comes when omnivores can wrap their heads around the idea of eating meat grown in a lab and in vitro meat becomes available at markets, I’ll be the first in line to purchase some lab-grown bacon.

Because a vote in favor of lab-grown meat is a vote against farm-grown meat. Here’s hoping lab-grown meat eventually replaces farm-grown meat completely, eliminating the factory farming industry and all the cruelty, waste, and bullshit (figurative and literal) that surrounds it.