Eco Lesbo Vego

Accidentally Vegan

Part of being a vegan is checking the ingredients on everything you buy. I often find myself checking ingredients on things I’m sure won’t be vegan, but I look just in case.

Sometimes, I’m pleasantly surprised!

This section lists foods that are accidentally vegan – not marketed at vegans, something you would expect to be vegan or something you would automatically think of when you consider vegan foods. Read on – you might be surprised!

• Nabisco Oreos (not the mini ones, but all the others are fine)
• Skittles
• Black and Gold milk bottle lollies
• Allen’s jelly beans
• Lindt Lindor 70% plain dark chocolate (including plain blocks and easter eggs, but not including flavoured blocks)
• Lindt Lindor 85% plain dark chocolate
• Aeroplane Jelly quick set jelly (this is now difficult to find)
• Cottee’s Cold Water Jelly crystals
• Most shelf-stable jelly (if it’s already made up and on the shelf, it almost certainly doesn’t have gelatine, but check the ingredients)
• Custard powder (I use Poppy cos it’s a Brisbane-based company and my family has been using it for generations, but you can only find it in Foodworks these days; Coles and Woolies seem to have decided to support the Foster Clark’s, which is from Malta, if Google can be believed – I always thought they were from NSW)
• Evaporated soy milk (near the evaporated milk in the supermarket – it’s great for creamy pasta cos it’s thicker than regular soy milk)
• Sanitarium vegie roast*
• Sanitarium vegie mince*
• Sanitarium sausages (bbq; original; curried; vegie; hot dogs; rosemary, sage and parsley; sundried tomato and kalamata olive)*
• Sanitarium deli luncheon (smoked and henchen)*
• Sanitarium burgers (not burgers and lentil patties)*
• Coles Finest 70% dark chocolate
• Black Swan roasted garlic hommus (and lots of other kinds of hommus, but this is my favourite!)
• Mike’s Real Food curried lentil pie (family-sized – this is really hard to find now)
• Flannery’s dark chocolate – all kinds (although I think this might be purposefully vegan)
• Allen’s sherbies
• Nando’s Moroccan curry sauce
• Coles roasted capsicum dip with pomegranate and walnut (this is now discontinued)
• Red Rock’s Thai chili, lemongrass, coriander and cashew dip (personally I didn’t like this)
• Red Rock’s Moroccan pumpkin dip
• Sakata original and seaweed rice crackers
• Plain or salted corn chips (Mission, Doritos, Coles etc)
• Old El Paso salsas (you can only find my favourite one, Spicy Bean Dip, at Foodworks now – Coles and Woolies stopped selling it)
• Salt and vinegar potato chips
• White Wings Golden Buttercake Cake Mix
• Cadbury Drinking Chocolate (including the mint flavoured kind – and the caramel flavoured kind, but it’s gross)
• Sharwood’s Madras curry sauce
• Lolly Gobble Bliss Bombs Nutty Caramel Popcorn
• Coles Caramel Flavoured Popcorn
• Hot Cake House pancakes (obviously not the cheese, chocolate or custard ones)
• Home Brand Garlic Bread (from Woolworth’s)
• Most Syndian products (ok, these are not accidentally vegan, but they’re so new, I wanted to note them)
• Whittaker’s Bittersweet chocolate block (family size)
• Whittaker’s dark chocolate blocks (orange zest, ghana peppermint, rum and raisin etc)
• Whittaker’s Bittersweet Peanut Slab (vegan peanut slab, people! get excited!)
• Whittaker’s individual chocolate bars as long as they are dark chocolate (including one with little orange pieces in it – yum!)
• Yumi’s felafel bites
• Yumi’s spicy pumpkin dip
• Arnott’s Chocolate Ripple biscuits
• Arnott’s Raspberry Shortcake biscuits
• Weis’s Mango Sorbet
• Borg’s puff pastry
• Pampas puff pastry
• Nabisco Ritz crackers (these things are saving me when I’m sick of chips, especially since Jatz are totally NOT vegan)
• Betty Crocker Melting Moments biscuit mix (just use vegan margarine instead of butter)
• Patak’s Rogan Josh, Balti, Jalfrezi and Biryani curry sauces
• Homai cocktail spring rolls
• Homai entertainment pack (check the ingredients to be sure you’re getting the right one, there is a meat version too)
• Kong Foo Sing fortune cookies
• Woolwoth’s vol au vent cases (really good filled with coconut chocolate pudding)
• Sakata Italian tomato and basil rice crackers
• Carman’s muesli bars (except the yoghurt one) – even the dark chocolate one has no dairy! (Some do have honey, so if you don’t eat that, check the ingredients)
• Coles Caramelised onion hommus and Sun-dried tomato hommus (this was discontinued before it even had time to become regular)
• Bread Top’s green bean sesame balls (just deep-fried glutinous rice balls filled with green bean paste and rolled in sesame seeds)
• Savour spicy broad beans (pick up a packet near the wasabi peas in Coles)
• Dairy-free gelato from Gelatissimo on Albert St in the city, just off Queen St Mall (access the nutritional information online)
• Nature Valley granola bars, including the ones with dark chocolate chunks! (Check for honey if you don’t eat it)
• Nice&Natural Nut Bar (only the original flavour)
• Black Swan cannelini bean dip (it says it’s for a limited season only)
• Crumpets – I’ve yet to find a packet that aren’t vegan (try these toasted with nuttelex and golden syrup… om nom nom!)
• English muffins – I’ve yet to find a packet that aren’t vegan
• Bread – check the ingredients, but so far I’ve only found one kind of Turkish bread that wasn’t vegan (all the Orthodox Christians I meet tell me how challenging Lent is cos you can’t have bread… I don’t understand what kind of bread they’re eating because I’ve never found this to be a problem)
• Anzac biscuits from the bakery sections of Coles and Woolies (none of the other biscuits are vegan though)
• Uncle Ben’s Mexican Style Express Rice (many of the other kinds of Express rice are not vegan, but this one definitely is)
• Chocolate crackles, just like your mum used to make for parties when you were a kid! (No, you can’t buy these in a shop, but trust me when I tell you your mum will be happy she can make something for you using a recipe she already has and doesn’t have to modify)

* I’ve included Sanitarium faux-meat products in here, because many of them are not vegan and I felt this was a good opportunity to specify which are!