Fresh Vegetable Recipes

What is the most unexpectedly non-vegetarian food you have ever seen?

Unnecessary additives to food that stop them being vegetarian... What is the strangest that you have seen??

Public Comments

1. chicken to a chicken and mushroom pie. i was like omg what is the point in having chickin in that
2. Hot dogs. I didn't realize they had meat in them.
3. Egg in Quorn making it not (properly) vegetarian has always pissed me off. Other than that its gotta be milk, milk powder, lactose and casin that manage to get into everything. How do they manage it?
4. The average glass of water contains 189ppm of RAW STEAK.
5. Umm...probably hot dog wrapped in salami and bacon w/ ham, deep fried, then put on a stick of this very thin sausage. I'm a vegetarian so I would never eat that. Just looking at it makes me gag!
6. maltesers. they used to have bits of calf stomach in them. ewwww. but now they don't :o) so i can enjoy their lovely, chocolatey goodness again :o)
7. Orange juice. Some of it now has fish oil in it! (the added omega-3 is from fish.)
8. I only found out recently that major brands of yogurt include gelatin. (I don't eat the stuff, I'm vegan, but I assumed it was OK for vegetarians.) A lot of cheese is made with rennet. McDonalds French Fries use beef flavoring.
9. Skittles and starbursts. When I was a teenager, I learned what gelatin was, and discovered that they're in the candy (my parents never knew this, otherwise they would have told me earlier. I swear, I have to educate my foreigner parents about the crazy stuff americans do). Onion soup (it's in beef broth). Or any soup for that matter (chicken broth, especially Campbells). Beef/pork flavorings in oils of french fries. Certain types of red food coloring (carmic acid/carmine)
10. white or cane sugar contains bone char (calcinated animal bones) for de colourising
11. I was reading the label on a box of rice, and it said it contained dehydrated chicken. That was pretty unexpected.
12. Well, I look at things from a vegan perspective, and i was shopping for food that my kids could make themselves while I am out, I bought Beanfeast expecting that to be edible, but OMG it contains milk powder. Why the heck is that in there? I reckon Batchelors have a massive shed full of milk powder and add it to all of their products. Serves me right I suppose, the kids know how to cook, I'll not look at that crap junk food again.
13. 120- Cochineal: A natural red colour derived from the bodies of pregnant scale insects. So watch out for that one its usually in strawberry milk, lollies and the other day i found it in a packet of chips!!! Anything with a red/pink colour might have that 120..
14. i found fish oil in microwave popcorn,thought that was odd,honestly we should all start a food petition the amount of secret animal bits in food is disgusting and enough to scare me off eating,im scared to eat out because of the amount of people that would not check things and put it in your dinner.also the amount of medication that has gelatin in it,I recently had to not take 4 different brands of antibiotic because of that
15. Burger King's veggie burger! They have two burgers labelled vegetarain, but only one (bean) has the "V" stamp from the Vegetarian Society. Apparently the veggie one is cooked in with the beef burgers etc
16. I recently discovered that bhajis and pakoras in many curry houses are made with egg after thinking they were universally vegan for a long time. Other than that, I'm generally not surprised when I see "whey powder" or words starting with "lact" on the ingredients lists of processed foods.
17. Probably rennet when I found out. I had known about gelatine but I was brokenhearted when I had to stop ordering domino's pizza. It seems small but my friends and I used to buy a pizza and eat it down in the park. It was our Friday ritual.
18. Fish in popcorn! Yucky! But E120 annoys me too - its beetles and there are alternatives...
19. Beer !
20. who would have thought there are crushed bugs (E122) in some brands of candy?
21. Fanta...and some other drinks made by Coca-Cola. They contain beta-carotene colouring and fish gelatin is used to stabilise this (though it's not labelled on the product...I guess it falls into the "processing aid" category which EU legislation doesn't require companies to label).
22. In Spain I got an onion tart thing which turned out to be tuna with a couple of onion slices on top (Luckily I realised before eating it!) And these vegetable burger things that listed lots of vegetables in the description and on closer inspection of the ingredients turned out to have 25% ham in it! But no mention of that in the description... I also hate the amount of things are vegan apart from milk protein or something!