Enter Vegan Becel. Becel seems to have pretty much just veganized their normal spreadable margarine. It has a soft texture, is lower in saturated fats and tastes just like their normal stuff.
Earth Balance still has a wide range of products, unmatched by anyone else. So if you need a good shortening or a flavoured spread, they are still probably the way to go. But when I need a big bowl of margarine for breakfast, Becel is my weapon of choice.
I think vegan Becel tastes better than Earth Balance but as a rule I tend to avoid it because they are owned by animal testing giant Unilever. I actually found a new vegan margarine not too long ago called Crystal, you can find it at Sobeys. It's a lot less expensive than EB and also has a taste quite similar to Becel. We all do the best we can though. :)
ReplyDeleteUnilever actually puts a ton of time and money into banning animal testing in Europe and the US. They only do it when required by law or industry best practices and they want that changed.
ReplyDeleteUmm I think you should do more research on that. Any animal testing is not okay and a vegan should not think so. You just have to do a quick google search to find the truth.
DeleteA more in-depth search on the topic will validate my point. Also, I am not saying animal testing is okay. I am saying it is something a company of a certain size in a certain industry cant avoiding doing when they introduce certain new products or processes for human use (by law). Any processed ingredient in any product like this would need to have been cleared by Health Canada/The FDA/EFSA. Generally the law requires this to be done by whatever the industry standard practice is (often animal testing using mice). This is expensive and negatively affects their image. This is why they funnel a lot of money into researching alternatives and protesting specific laws (not because they care. Corporations of this size generally take actions based on mainly market conditions and profit)
DeleteThe difference with Unilever is that they are often the ones who introduce new industry practices or products (that cruelty free labeled products generally use after being cleared for use in a market). I don't think it is right that an animal should be tested on unless there are extreme health implications (Vaccine production, etc), but I also accept that if I am going to use anything more processed than a base plant ingredient that the current state of the law and of what is acceptable in food safety science dictates that there is a good chance that animal testing was required for it to be on the market. Thinking something is wrong and being realistic are very different things.
Oh man, you are so wrong. I feel sad at how wrong you are. Testing of cosmetics is NOT required in the majority of companies. There are many other ways to test things. You are NOT a vegan if you support animal testing companies, period. You may eat vegan but it ends there.
ReplyDeletehttp://voices.yahoo.com/top-5-cosmetic-companies-test-animals-today-5584883.html
ReplyDeleteTa da! That's just one of many articles. I've been a vegan for 3 years, research this stuff daily. You know nothing.
We were talking about food here, but I'll gladly read more into cosmetics. As far as I know cosmetic testing falls more into industry "best practices" and is far less regulated by at least Health Canada and the US FDA (if they are not marketed with any health effects). In these cases I think they test when there are product safety concerns that could result in civil legal action against them. I don't know enough about what alternatives there are to this, but I'll certainly look more into it. I'll gladly use alternative products to anything I am using should there be an alternative that was not just a derivative of animal testing by another company that is also proven to be safe in some industry accepted way. I was recently the victim of an improperly tested product that gave me a bad skin condition before it was recalled months later, so this is a topic of great interest to me. Please feel free to do this research for me and paste some more referenced articles in you next insult. ;)
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