Am I Still Considered Vegan?

[Belle]

I've been vegan for almost two years now, and was vegetarian for three years before that. But recently I found out that camera film that I use all the time is made from gelatine. I've been using it forever.

And also yesterday, I attended a wedding and they had these cakes that they'd made sure were vegan just for me, they'd gotten me a whole box. But after checking today, I found out that only one of them was vegan after eating two others.

I would never eat anything if I knew it wasn't vegan, I feel so guilty for not checking beforehand.

 

[ewomack]

These things will happen, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Think of them as learning experiences and reminders to check more in the future. I often find it challenging to remain 100% vegan 100% of the time, though I try. I don't let accidents or misunderstandings derail me too much. So try not to worry about it, keep vigilant, have compassion for yourself and others, and continue on your path. It sounds like you're doing just fine overall.

 

[Lou]

This falls under the Personal Purity controversy.
How perfect do you have to be to call yourself vegan?
IMHO, perfection is essentially impossible. But I neatly sidestep this issue by relying on intent. Heck, the most common definition of vegan uses the word strive - just a fancy word for tries.
So basically, if you are trying to be vegan you are a vegan (period).

 

[Emma JC]

welcome to the forum @Belle

The cake issue is a common thing that there is little to do to avoid, you did your best so no harm done.

Film is a tricky issue and really goes to what @Lou has written - here you have a choice to switch to digital or carry on and be okay with your choice.

There are so many items that we all use on a daily basis, cars, clothes, etc etc that likely are not vegan and we have to be okay with and again, just do our best where we can.

Emma JC
Find your vegan soulmate or just a friend. www.spiritualmatchmaking.com

 

[Lou]

I wasn't going to bring this up at first. Mostly cause my knowledge about film is very much out-of-date. I was a very early adoptee of digital. Secondly because I have no interest in personal purity. I have heard purists declaim everything from cars to computers. is even watching a movie a vegan thing to do?

But there are probably other reasons to forgo film. I think there are real environmental concerns - from toxic waste to just plain old regular waste.

 

[KellecoUK]

I saw this image posted earlier and it made me think of 2 occasions when I've eaten animal based products. I recently took a bite of a prawn cracker and straight away realised that it contained fish. Spat it out, but still had the taste in my mouth. The previous time was when running the Brighton marathon. About 20 miles in I ate a few Haribos for a sugar rush. I still think about that one now, but I think mistakes will happen and we just have to do our best!

 

[veganteen1994]

I've been vegan for almost two years now, and was vegetarian for three years before that. But recently I found out that camera film that I use all the time is made from gelatine. I've been using it forever.

And also yesterday, I attended a wedding and they had these cakes that they'd made sure were vegan just for me, they'd gotten me a whole box. But after checking today, I found out that only one of them was vegan after eating two others.

I would never eat anything if I knew it wasn't vegan, I feel so guilty for not checking beforehand

I'm not sure if I can be considered vegan as well.
My parents claim that I need dairy for calcium, so they force me to eat a spoonful or two of dairy every evening - they do this against my will, and I would never touch dairy otherwise. * Apart from that, my breakfasts are always vegan (as I convinced my parents to buy plant-based butter, milk and cereal), and my lunch is always vegan as well because I purchase vegan options at school. Am I still vegan?
* I also do my best to smear it across my plate to eat as little as possible

 

[Graeme M]

My parents claim that I need dairy for calcium, so they force me to eat a spoonful or two of dairy every evening - they do this against my will, and I would never touch dairy otherwise.

I always hesitate to comment on these kinds of questions. But I'm largely with Lou. You do what you can in your circumstances and what that involves is up to you. Most people who want to embrace veganism will usually do as much as they can or feel comfortable doing. Imagine if the whole world did that?

As to this specific thing. It's the buying not the eating that really counts. Eating an animal product has no effect on anything at all other than how you might feel about it. I'll assume your parents buy the dairy and would anyway, so you certainly aren't the one making dairy farming happen. Eat the spoonful of dairy and don't worry about it, unless you have a personal ick factor happening.

 

[veganteen1994]

I always hesitate to comment on these kinds of questions. But I'm largely with Lou. You do what you can in your circumstances and what that involves is up to you. Most people who want to embrace veganism will usually do as much as they can or feel comfortable doing. Imagine if the whole world did that?

As to this specific thing. It's the buying not the eating that really counts. Eating an animal product has no effect on anything at all other than how you might feel about it. I'll assume your parents buy the dairy and would anyway, so you certainly aren't the one making dairy farming happen. Eat the spoonful of dairy and don't worry about it, unless you have a personal ick factor happening.

Thanks for your kind reply.
I justified eating some of the food that my non vegan friends had bought using that logic, but eventually I realised that if I continued doing that my craving for animal products would worsen. As well as this, I wanted to stop viewing animals, or their secretions as products, and to appear more put together Infront of my friends, so that they saw that if they could do it, I could too.

I guess that's why I beat myself up over eating animal products. You are absolutely right though, and your words were rather comforting.

Thank you,
veganteen1994

 

[Lou]

you might reach out to your parents with some logic/science argument.
a couple of spoonfuls of milk contain something like 50 mg of calcium. (that is a very ballpark number)
a 13 year old girl needs something like 1300 mg of calcium. so 50 mg is about 3% of your daily requirement.
Now multis don't contain much calcium cause its a bulky mineral but there are many calcium supplement on the market. Heck a tums contains 200mg.
But best bet is to get calcium in your diet.
Most plant milks are fortified with the same amount of calcium as cow's milk. but a glass of milk from a cow or from plants only contains 300. That's why they say to drink 4 glasses a day.
And the calcium in cow's milk is exactly the same as calcium in fortified food.
Dirty little secret - dairy cows are fed calcium supplements, too.
But there are plenty of other sources of calcium. Tofu is great. Broccoli is very good.

If you hang around here long enough you will hear a lot of people say that the Key to good nutrition is to eat a lot of whole food plant based foods.

-------
and to get back to the vegan question.
Right there in the definition it says, "...seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable.."
Seeks = tries
So the way I see it is you try to be a vegan - you are a vegan (period).
Of course the "trying" part has to be honest.
But the P &P part means you don't have to go crazy - or drive anyone else crazy

The rest is just open to discussion.

 

[Graeme M]

Most plant milks are fortified with the same amount of calcium as cow's milk. but a glass of milk from a cow or from plants only contains 300. That's why they say to drink 4 glasses a day.

As an aside to this, just because a food is fortified with calcium doesn't mean it's as bioavailable as calcium that is found naturally in the cow's milk matrix (or other natural food matrices). There's a reason milk is an excellent source of dietary calcium. A recent analysis found that many calcium fortified plant milks are not great sources of calcium, with the researchers writing:

"The bioaccessible Ca supplies from plant-based beverages were surprisingly low, despite their high Ca content which raises doubt about the Ca health claims often associated with most brands. Bioaccessibility from these products was < 5 %, compared to 30 % for milk and was attributed to the low solubility of the tricalcium phosphate used for fortification and the potential presence of phytate. "

I wrote to the maker of my preferred brand of calcium fortified soy milk and found they used tricalcium phosphate. Now I don't know just how good this research is, but I found it a bit concerning. However, they also found that some foods are naturally very good sources of bioavailable calcium. They write:

"Overall, we have shown that only a few food sources were equivalent to milk in terms of their Ca bioaccessible supplies with kale, finger millet porridge and fortified white bread being the top three sources".

and

"...kale was by far the best source as it could provide up to 50 % of daily Ca requirements, for a small and low calorie serving of just 80 g."

We now add kale to our meals, though it's not a food to eat too much of regularly.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0963996923013431

 

[Lou]

As an aside to this, just because a food is fortified with calcium doesn't mean it's as bioavailable as calcium that is found naturally in the cow's milk matrix (or other natural food matrices).

Actaully I think you may have fallen for some diary propaganda.

Years ago I did a deep dive into this and it was slow going. Like soy and eggs for every good scholarly article there were 5 (or 10) BS articles that were shills for meat or dairy or eggs. And in the case of Calcium we also have a ton of misinformation from the supplement industry. Anyway after a while I feel I uncovered the "real" facts. Unforunetly this was a while ago and I only remember the important take-aways. Also I bookmarked so much stuff that I would have to essentially re-research this topic to give you some good citations.

Anyway, my main take aways were that abosbtion rates for various forms were close enough for government work. And other things like the presence of Vitamin D and Magnesium were way more important. (and fortified plant milks include those with other good things).

 

[Graeme M]

Actaully I think you may have fallen for some diary propaganda.

Hmmm... my diary typically seems relatively neutral on most things!!

I've generally found from my own reading that it seems to depend somewhat on the kind of calcium used. The paper (the authors of which declare no financial or competing interests) suggests that in those fortified foods they tested, calcium phosphate was less effective. That matches my own earlier research which found that calcium sulphate or chloride is much better. That's why I was concerned that my preferred soy milk brand is calcium triphosphate fortified.

This article I've found actually reviews that paper. What I note from this person's analysis is that indeed, calcium triphosphate fortified soy milk performs worst. As to kale, I have found differing claims about how much calcium is in it and how bioavailable it is, but there are definitely concerns in many foods with the inhibiting effects of phytates and oxalates. Kale is low in both these inhibiting compounds. Note that this person points out the study is an in vitro, not in vivo study.

Are Tofu & Plant Milks A Poor Source of Bioavailable Calcium? – Sceptical Doctor

scepticaldoctor.com

On the whole, I think I'll give that paper I linked a pass in terms of being unbiased, but I remain a little uncertain whether or not it is right about what actually happens insiode our bodies! Still, worth thinkinmg about.

Getting back on track, your comment earlier is a good one. A spoonful or two of dairy isn't exactly setting the world on fire for calcium!

you might reach out to your parents with some logic/science argument.
a couple of spoonfuls of milk contain something like 50 mg of calcium. (that is a very ballpark number)
a 13 year old girl needs something like 1300 mg of calcium. so 50 mg is about 3% of your daily requirement.

 

[Lou]

Well, like I said I did a deep dive on this years ago and am resistant to go back and check this stuff out again. But the main take-away I got was that the form of calcium does not matter that much. The absorption rate of different forms isn't that great - and other factors are more important.

However I am also reminded that the absorption rate is never going to be 100%. So for me, when I used Chronometer to monitor calcium - I always shot for over 100%.

Fortified soy milk was a good source of calcium for me and sometimes I take a tums at bedtime.

Also if I remember right, most fortified foods use Calcium Carbonate. Silk, which is what I mostly buy uses Calcium Carbonate. They also include some Tricalcium Phosphate. I think Tricalcium Phosphate is popular as a food additive mostly for its "anti-caking" properties but also as a source of calcium and phosphorus. Phosphouous is also a required mineral that vegans may need to supplement. It also helps in the abrorbion of calcium.

and just something worth mentioning: Calcium, phosphorous and magnesium are all important minerals but if taken as supplements there is a danger of toxicity. So we come back to the same adage, nutrients are best as taken in whole plant based foods. Although it's hard for vegans to get those minerals just from diet alone.

 

[Tom L.]

@Lou I've used Citrical and another brand of calcium supplement. They both contain calcium as Calcium carbonate, as well as some vitamin D. I'm glad to hear that "Silk" soymilk uses the carbonate form also; it also has vitamin B-12, and I drink it sometimes. I'm also quite fond of calcium-rich vegetables such as kale.