Post Punk Kitchen Forum

this is a common myth, but its not true.

There was a whole discussion in this thread about items that appeared to be vegan that had cholesterol listed in the nutritional info. I've run across this phenomenon too, from a vegan/vegetarian company. Their apparently 100% plant-based felafel had 5 mg of cholesterol listed on the label while one of their products that contained eggs had no cholesterol listed. You'd think a company that sells specifically marked vegan products would get this right. I'm still baffled by it.

I'm happy as hell that according to Barnivore, so many Belgian beers are vegan!! I find it really hard to find information about the veganness of the wines available in my area, though. I'll admit to not being hugely vigilant with wines because of this, although now that I know how much of the local beer is vegan, I've been choosing beer over wine more often.

That is different though, it is a labeling mistake vs a product actually containing cholesterol. I've had labeling the other way, like kimchi or pickled veggies at the korean market not listing seaweed/fish/whatever but having a distinctly fishy taste.

Many years ago I suspected a student restaurant adding fat from roasting meat to potatoes. I asked a student who studied biochemistry if the food can be tested, perhaps if cholesterol is present, and he told me plants contain cholesterol, too. I called about 10 biochemical labs from yellow pages, nobody could do the test. In the end I talked to the restaurant manager, and, of course, she denied it.

One Tartex-like spread by Schneekoppe had cholesterol listed, but all the ingredients were vegan, so I ate it.

Coconut Popsicles got me.

Same here! For me it was a dreyers coconut bar. It was with all the other dairy free fruit bars so I figured it was ok. Nope!!

I rescheduled a work meeting today so I could specifically go to Target and check on the Ciao Bella Coconut Sorbet which I swore had dairy in it.

Which reminds me of a recent 'funny'. I think after you have been vegan for a while and get used to your vegan things, sometimes you assume everything is vegan (kind of, not really). I mean you know that navigating restaurants is difficult sometimes but generally, grocery stores can be havens especially places like Whole Foods. Anyway, my husband likes to have burritos on hand at work so I am always checking for new frozen burritos and there are a lot of bean burritos out there. So I was looking at a burrito that said "bean and potato" which sounded good, I checked the ingredients scanning for the normal things like cheese, egg and what not. It looked fine so I bought it, took it home and had it in the freezer for a week. I was going to put it in my husband's lunch box to take to work (they have a shared fridge) when I checked it again. It wasn't bean and potato, it was beef and potato. Somehow I had misread it and didn't notice that aspect at all. If I had given it to my husband, I'm not sure he would've checked because he would've assumed me giving it to him was ok.

Ha! I think it makes sense, though, that you'd get so used to looking for the sneaky ingredients, it'd be easy to lose sight of the big ones. Especially in a case like that, when beans are a super common burrito ingredient.

From a pizza place near me that just started offering gluten-free crusts - the only ones I've seen locally that don't contain eggs or milk, as far as I can tell.



So...
Somewhere, from all that water, grain, canola oil, and yeast, they're getting ten milligrams of cholesterol? But how? From where? I'm assuming that either they're erroneously listing cholesterol where there is none (yes, partially because I want to be able to eat at just one take-out pizza place within six hours' travel) but I can't work out why they would either be hiding dairy/egg in a crust marketed to people with at least one food sensitivity, or how they would come to the conclusion that yeast is the world's worst cholesterol offender.

Look at their other nutrition facts and see if they're all the same.

Yeah, that's weird.

I might call them, or email the company, since I don't think calling the one franchise is likely to get me anything more than a cashier who probably doesn't really know why the label says it does and would really much rather just be making someone's pizza order.

I'm inclined to trust the ingredients over the nutrition, though? We shall see.