Cannot think of a suitable title for this post, but thought that this may be a useful info for most of us (if you want to be knowledgible about the ingredients in the food that you eat)
I am sure all of us like to eat out or cook different cuisines at home as well. But then lot of food items in this country have an ingredient that comes from a non-vegetarian source, for e.g gelatin, rennet in cheese, chicken/beef broth in food.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a list of all such items. This post could serve as a list of food items to avoid, questions to ask if you are eating out or a source of items(which do not have these things) – with brand names, store to buy etc.
An example could be cheese – Trader joes has a bunch of them but if someone knows which one’s are rennetless then it would help others too.
Or questions to ask at a mexican/thai restaurant would be
1. Does the rice have chicken broth?
2. Do they put fish sauce/oyster sauce?
Oh this is a good one. Recently I had mailed Olive Garden enquiring about the ingredients in their sauces and recommended vegetarian dishes. But the reply their PR officer gave was highly disappointing.
Dear Sneha:
Thank you for visiting olivegarden.com.
We appreciate the challenges you face in honoring your personal
convictions. Veganism and vegetarianism take many forms. A few of our menu
items can be adjusted to accommodate a vegan or vegetarian diet, but
none wholly meet the criteria. Our current nutritional database does not
include information to the level of specific detail you require.
Depending on your personal philosophy, we can suggest the following
items as meatless, but not necessarily vegetarian or vegan as they may
contain some ingredients which do not comply with your personal
philosophy:
Minestrone Soup
Garden Salad
Marinara Sauce
Capellini Pomodoro
Eggplant Parmigiana
Fettuccine Alfredo
We certainly empathize with the challenges presented to you when you
weigh decisions regarding dining out. We recognize that we do not meet
the needs of everyone and our objective remains to offer what our
guests, through their selections, indicate are favorites.
If Guest Relations can be of further assistance, please write us again
through olivegarden.com (www.olivegarden.com/company/contact_us/ ) or
call us at 1-800-331-2729. We look forward to serving you with
Hospitaliano at any of our Olive Garden restaurants.
Andy
Olive Garden Guest Relations
Taco Bell and Bunch of other food chains have their ingredients list published on their website or made available to people on request.
Also lot of Pastry Puff Sheets, Breads do have beef oil. This is beyond our imagination.
The above mail was a reaction to a Recipie shown on Food Networkk where the host used chicken broth in Alfredo Sauce. This is what we usually eat at Olive Garden as they recommend it to us as vegetarian.
Question to ask in Indian resturant will be – Does Nan have egg?
Yes good number of Indian resturant use egg in Nan and do not announce that even after being soo aware of Indian Vegetarian feelings. Then how can we blame non_indian resturant. Alternative will be to request for Paratha if they server eggless one.
At Italian places even tough sauce is eggless, meatless vegg, pasta might contain egg. Macroni Grill claims that all their pasta are eggless. Pasta Pomodoro has protin pasta/wheat pasta which they claim are eggless.
Also many Mexican Restaurants cook dishes in LARD..
1. Beware of the soups (grocery/restaurants) that might have chicken broth and not vegetable broth in them.
2. Places like Trader Joe’s and Whole foods carry eggless pasta, burger patties etc. They also provide a list of cheese that have vegetable rennet and not animal rennet in them.
3. In general it’s a good idea to read the ingredients of any stuff that you shop at the grocery store.
4. Some restaurants don’t consider seafood when you talk about vegetarian food. So be sure to ask about that as well in addition to other known non-veg stuff.
Trader Joe’s has many things (including pasta sauce) that say “it is made on the same equipment where shell fish or eggs have been processed”.
Sometimes they use “it is made on the same facility where eggs, nuts have been processed”.
Everyone,
Its a good idea to have certain type of information available for all of us to reference but I wonder if the current system might need a little change. What I mean is that, later sometime if I want to take a look at this discussion to check what I should eat and ask etc., its going to be difficult to extract all the right information from everyone’s comments.
Wondering if we could have a separate area of putting the general comments and put the exact relevant information in another area? That way it will be easy to reference it rather than having to go into all the comments and figure everything out. A Simple table(excel style with columns like Name of the food/restaurant, Ingredient to look out for, Name of the person who entered the information/reference info.) to enter the must have information and a separate area for comments might work. I know that talk is cheap and I am giving some work for Prashant 🙂 but I am sure this is a piece of cake for him 🙂
Cheese have substance called as rennet. Sargento brand has bunch of flavors which are made with non-animal rennet Rennets (enzymes) are added when making cheese to thicken the mixture to form the curds. These milk-clotting enzymes originate in microbial (synthetic) and animal sources. Most of our shredded and sliced cheeses and all of our refrigerated Sargento Snacks natural cheese sticks and cubes are made with non-animal rennets. The only Sargento natural cheeses that may contain animal enzymes are those that contain Romano, Provolone, Asiago or Jarlsberg cheeses. Those include: Fancy Parmesan & Romano Shredded Cheese, Reduced Fat 4 Cheese Italian Shredded Cheese, 6 Cheese Italian Shredded Cheese, Italian with Garlic Shredded Cheese, ChefStyle Mozzarella & Provolone Shredded Cheese, Extra Fine Shredded Asiago Cheese, Bistro Blends Mozzarella & Asiago with Roasted Garlic Shredded Cheese, Deli Style Sliced Provolone Cheese, Reduced Fat Deli Style Sliced Provolone Cheese and Deli Style Sliced Jarlsberg Cheese. The cheese dip in our non-refrigerated Sargento Snacks, Cheese Dips!, Cheese Dip & Sticks, Cheese Dip & Pretzels and Cheese Dip & Crackers, is made with beef rennet.
to get more information about rennet go to Traderjoes website.
http://traderjoes.com/products/brochures/rennet_west.asp#ANIMAL
I was going through some of the recipies on Olive Garden’s website and looks like they use egg yolks and chicken broth in most of their sauces. Even though the main entree may not have meat but sauces do have.
Below is interesting info:
vegproducts.pdf
Recently we got Planters Peanuts (dry roasted). It had gelatin ! Hard to believe and wonder why they put gilatin in such a simple snack as Peanuts?
Chipotle a Mexican Fast Food Chain claims that their cheese is Vegetarian because they used vegetable based rennet and not animal based rennet.
We like their food a lot specially their burrito in a bowl is my favorite.
They are good value for the money
http://www.chipotle.com/#flash/food_ingredients
Tillamock is a good brand of cheese which does not have animal rennet . I think you get cheddar, pepper jack and i think mozarella also . They are easily available at lucky , safeway .
I had emailed Subway , quizznos couuple of years back . Both the chains have bread which is eggles. So if you take vege sandwich without cheese, mayonnaise you are good to go . their cookies do have eggs.
Yoplait has gelatin an animal product .
We also used to love Chipotle. Infact we stopped going to Taco Bell after we discovered this place in MD.
I had written to roundtable couple of weeks ago for their ingredients and they responded with following
Round Table pizza creamy garlic sauce has egg yolks 🙁
Subject: Round Table Ingredient Inquiry
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:37:28 -0700
From: sreese@roundtablepizza.com
Pizza Sauce
Tomato Paste, Water, Spices, Salt, Garlic Powder, Dextrose, Hydrolyzed Corn Protein.
Creamy Garlic Sauce
Water, Soybean Oil, Distilled Vinegar, Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, Egg Yolks, Buttermilk, Contains Less Than 2% of Each of the Following: Skim Milk, Salt, Gum Arabic, Garlic Extractives, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Sugar, Whey, Onion Extractives, Xanthan Gum, Spices, Glutamic Acid, Calcium Hydroxide, Dehydrated Garlic, Sodium Caseinate (A Milk Derivative), Lactic Acid, Extractives of Black Pepper, Potassium Sorbate (A Preservative), Soy Protein Isolate, Mono and Diglycerides, Disodium 5′-Inosinate, Garlic Concentrate, Disodium Phosphate, Locust Bean Gum, Carrageenan.
Ingredients for Gourmet Veggie Pizza:
Dough
Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Ferrous Sulfate (as Iron), Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Shortening (Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil), Salt, Sugar, Nonfat Dry Milk, Yeast.
Creamy Garlic Sauce
Water, Soybean Oil, Distilled Vinegar, Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, Egg Yolks, Buttermilk, Contains Less Than 2% of Each of the Following: Skim Milk, Salt, Gum Arabic, Garlic Extractives, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Sugar, Whey, Onion Extractives, Xanthan Gum, Spices, Glutamic Acid, Calcium Hydroxide, Dehydrated Garlic, Sodium Caseinate (A Milk Derivative), Lactic Acid, Extractives of Black Pepper, Potassium Sorbate (A Preservative), Soy Protein Isolate, Mono and Diglycerides, Disodium 5′-Inosinate, Garlic Concentrate, Disodium Phosphate, Locust Bean Gum, Carrageenan.
Three Cheese Blend
Pasteurized Milk, Cheese Culture, Salt, Enzymes, Annatto Coloring, Anticaking Agent (Cellulose), Artificial Smoke Flavoring.
Spinach, Chopped Garlic, Mushrooms, Zucchini, Artichoke Hearts, Roma Tomatoes, Red Onion, Italian Herb Seasoning, Green Onions
Pizza Depot – Garlic Sauce also has egg in it. So may be next time any other pizza place offers garlic sauce, one might want to inquire in detail.
Also Olive Garden all pasta, ravioli has egg in them. Prepared dish may not have it but pasta themselves have it. We had discovered it few years back and stop going there. Reconfirmed recently during lunch event from work. Their Eggplant Parmesan Pattie also dipped in batter which has egg. So they then made plain roasted eggplant for me. Pasta themselves having egg is true at many other Italian places. Alternative some of them provide is wheat pasta.
In most cases, fresh pasta noodles have eggs and most likely restaurants use fresh pastas. Dry noodles may be without eggs.
Hobee’s restaurant – Other than ravioli, none of their pasta has egg. They clearly specify on their menu.