Have your say on what VEGAN means!

As vegans, we all know the meaning of the word, which according to a pretty accepted definition runs like this:

"a vegan is a person who rejects to use any animal derived products in their diet: meat, poultry, fish, dairy, eggs, and often honey. A vegan also rejects animal byproducts, such as whey, casein, gelatin and they do not wear or buy any clothes or furniture item made with fur, leather, silk, wool".

However, it is the general impression not all vegans are the same. Some of us may care just for Meat+Fish+Poultry+Eggs+Dairy. For many others the list may run way longer. And I even met vegans who would wear not only leather but fur as well and they were just avoiding cancer inducing ingredients! (ok, I almost killed her...I confess!)

Some time back, investigating about vegan travelling, I found out about SelectWisely, a company selling multi-language cards with dietary prescriptions to be shown in restaurants in foreign countries when travelling. Many food allergies card are available as well and all cards have images specifying which foods are off limits, for extra clarity.

Since they sell a vegetarian card, but do not have a vegan card in production, I emailed them and suggested one should be created. The reply was a positive one, but they are unsure what to write in it. This is SelectWisely reply email:

Thank you for your interesting and informative email. I have thought about creating a vegan card and have discussed this with other people via email and such. The challenge is one of standardization. In the world of food allergies, people have very specific requirements...'can't eat nuts' for instance. In the world of vegan, the choices are not so standardized. There are so many different variations it's hard to come up with one set of foods that satisfies the majority.

If you were to list the foods that 80% of vegans want to avoid, what would that be?

Best regards,

Jim

Ok, this is our chance and our challenge: these cards, given their small size, do have limits to the amount of to-be-avoided foods they can list. But we do have limitations ourselves about what we eat when travelling, checking about foods we eat in tiny details. So have you say about what VEGAN foods exactly should be on your list: the three-five items which are absolute no go and whatever else it is important to you but not to capital (think of food colourants which may be animal based for example).

The results will be shown back to people at SelectWisely and hopefully a vegan card is soon to be created!
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