How To Be Unhealthy Even When You Are Vegan

/ Jamila Smith

I’ve been Vegan since Veganuary this year. I used to associate the diet with bean sprouts and brown rice, but since “practicing,” I’ve learnt that there are ways to stick to eating junk food. I decided to keep up the anti animal-cruelty way past January and see where it takes me.

Here are some vegan foods for people like me that refuse to give up their comforts:

1. Remember, tortilla chips are still open to you. That means that you can pig out on them to your heart’s content… or rather (ultimately), discontent. So indulge yourself with in a generous, jumbo-sized bag. Just make sure that if there’s seasoning, it doesn’t contain dairy.

2. Dark chocolate can be unhealthy if consumed in excess! It does contain cocoa butter, but that doesn’t have dairy; vegans can eat it. Check to see if the manufacturers snuck milk into the chocolate, though. If they didn’t, go ahead and start your chocolate bar marathon.

3. As long as they haven’t been contaminated by meat, I am pleased to say you are welcome to eat chips! Fat ones are usually the best – but if thin ones are more your kind of thing, they’re usually pretty cheap. So start purchasing your bucketloads of them now. Unless you’re boycotting McDonalds, buy your fries from there; you’ll be a walking oxymoron.

4. Sushi is way less nutritious than you would like to think. Avoid the fish, roe and egg ones, and you’re ready to roll!

5. Popcorn is oily and flavourless, the ultimate vessel to carry sugar and salt. Enjoy.

6. Since you can’t exactly have most hot chocolate (or any drink with milk in it, for that matter), you can make up for your lack of hot sweet drinks… with cold sweet drinks! Coca Cola will be your evil saviour. As will Sprite, Fanta and most other fizzy drinks.

7. Biscuits. Well, some of them are vegan. And almost all of them are unhealthy. There’s currently a HUGE debate going on as to whether Oreos contain milk. Apparently it varies from country to country, and maybe it even depends on the region.

8. Obviously you can eat any crisps without animal products. Luckily for you these include a lot of “meat” flavoured crisps.

Thanks for reading!

15 thoughts on “How To Be Unhealthy Even When You Are Vegan”

  1. Well … if you’re worried about cruelty, you can’t eat chocolate. (Children are animals too!) http://www.foodispower.org/slavery-chocolate/
    Also, many many junk foods contain palm oil. That’s not actually made out of living creatures, but they still die if you eat it. http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/Whats_the_issue.php
    Basically … veganism is okay, if it sustains your body (my body is unrepentantly carnivorous). Maybe it’s a beginning. But there’s a LOT more to making ethical lifestyle choices than deciding whether your chips have been contaminated by meat… 🙂

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      • I try very hard not to eat chocolate, firstly because of the slavery, and secondly because I follow a ketogenic approach to eating, which means no carbs. (Sugar = carbohydrate.) I’ll be honest, it’s difficult … I really, really like chocolate and I gave it up only recently (didn’t know about the slavery issue until a few months ago) … so sometimes I do have some. But I’m WAY better than the chocolate-a-day that I used to eat!

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  2. A few thoughts on your post- I am not vegan, or vegetarian for that matter, but I have huge respect for people who make that choice. I don’t think that there is a point to eating unhealthy if you are a vegan. Everyone, vegan or not should eat healthier. Most of the time, eating unhealthy is bad for more than just your health. I eat absolutely no fast food right now. Not only is it expensive if you eat it more than perhaps once a week, but you are always getting ripped off (the quality is terrible) and it is really bad for you. If you learn to cook, you will save yourself lots of money, you will be healthier, and your food will be far better quality and you will feel good about it. When you eat out, avoid chains at all costs. They are built for maximum efficiency, which means packaged, frozen, bad quality food. Local restaurants will in most cases have much better quality food, for about the same price, it will just taste more homemade rather than that magical fake flavor you can only get from chains. I personally love tofu. With the right spices it can be amazing. Also, I had a reuben with seitan on it once (instead of meat) and it was incredible. That was from a local diner. My favorite hot drink, besides coffee, is ginger tea. It’s not sweet, but it has a delicious spicy flavor. Soy milk is a good alternative to milk, and you can make hot (soy) milk and honey! One of my favorite things to eat for lunch is a crunchy peanut butter sandwich. It’s easy, packed with protein, and delicious. I like to load mine up with extras like sunflower seeds, dry oats, almonds, and dried cranberries. It makes it extra crunchy and extra filling.

    You are such a good writer! I could learn a lot from you on how to blog.

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    • Hi Greg,

      Thanks so much for reading my post and finding the time to comment on it. I greatly appreciate it! Haha, the unhealthy tips were more of a joke than guidelines to follow; I too tend to eat pretty healthily. That is great that you don’t eat fast food! I also LOVE tofu. There are so many ways you can have it and so many types. Have you tried tofu covered in cornflour and fried? It’s really good with soya sauce. And like most people, I like silken tofu in my miso soup. Other ways I enjoy “normal” tofu are with a teriyaki marinade, or agedashi style! How do you like it? Apparently you can also use it in some cases as an egg substitute. Obviously not in cakes though, lol.

      Which chains in particular should I avoid? I mean, apart from MacDonalds, KFC etc.?? Thank you 🙂

      I always find it funny when someone mentions seitan because I always think they’re talking about Satan… Luckily, they’re very different! Yum, the reuben sounds delicious. Did you know that there is a band of that name?

      I LOOOOVE soy milk as well!! Do you like rice/coconut milk? Since being vegan I haven’t missed milk AT ALL because the alternatives taste so much better than the real thing. Unfortunately I can’t have honey because it comes from bees, but I’ll make what you suggested with sugar instead of it. What a great idea!! I love the sound of it.

      I have tried ginger tea, but the milky one from the sachet. It was a bit too sweet and not creamy enough, I think it was a different type to the one you like. My favourite drink is bubble tea and I thought I was going to miss it because I can’t have milk. But I found out that they do it with soy milk as well, and I was so happy!! It doesn’t taste any different to the one with milk.

      Thank you for your food ideas and tips! And I am so happy that you said I’m a good writer; it means A LOT to me. Thanks!!

      Hail Seitan,
      Jamila

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      • Okay, lots of things to reply to here 😛 –

        I have only had tofu a few times but I like it in stir fry with soy sauce.

        Chains to avoid – Olive Garden, Applebees, Fridays, etc. Most local restaurants don’t have TV commercials. (I realized you are British, so I don’t know what chains you have there)

        The ginger tea i have is medicinal, so basically its just straight up ginger herb. there is nothing else in it, and its great.

        As far as honey goes- I think that you should be safe eating honey; bee keeping requires the bees to be in a very natural habitat and the bees are never harmed for their honey. It’s your choice, but something to think about (maybe research a bit… I am no expert). Honey is one of the best things the world has to offer.

        You are welcome! You always give me a laugh. 🙂

        Hail Seitan 😛
        Greg

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      • Okay, thanks! Luckily I haven’t seen any of those chains in the UK so it will be easy avoiding them 🙂 Next time I go to the US I’ll remember what you told me though.

        Oh wow! That sounds good 🙂

        The reason I don’t want to eat honey is because I feel like it’s exploiting bees. Given the choice, I don’t think they’d want to let us have their honey! 🙂

        Stick to seitanism,
        Jamila

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  3. Very nice Jamila! Still vegan! 🙂
    Oreo’s in Argentina are not even vegetarian (or any other cookie for that matter). They are made from animal fat!!! It’s alway good to read the labels. You can’t imagine how many strange things some food contain!!

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  5. I’ll start off by mentioning that I’m not vegan or vegetarian (in fact I’m a shepherd’s daughter) so I was wondering if it’s the ethics behind animal slaughter that led you to try veganism? I honestly couldn’t go without meat and dairy, it’s part of my lifestyle as a rule that stretches back like, till the dawn of time in my society, so I admire you for doing it, but I’m just curious as I myself am totally against animal cruelty; although many people view farming as cruel it’s our job to look after and care for our food source and so I’m always interested to hear all the different views about it.

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    • Thank you so much for reading my post and commenting 🙂 I totally appreciate your interest and will try answering! Basically, I became vegan for this challenge called “Veganuary” (I actually did a post on it if you can be bothered to look for it, haha) which is to be vegan in January. I succeeded (yaaay) and just carried on; my main motivation being, as you’ve correctly said, animal welfare XD. I think it’s unfair to kill animals for their meat (I wouldn’t be against eating a non-diseased animal that had died naturally though) especially since a lot of meat isn’t ethically reared or killed. If there is an ethical way to kill! Even “organic” or “free-range” meat isn’t always treated as it claims to be. The details are pretty grim. As for the no-animal-products rule, I feel like it’s exploitative to use animals like that? I didn’t become vegan before Veganuary because I didn’t want to be the odd one out and feel left out when everybody else was having meat. Thank you so much for taking an interest and listening to my point of view; I admire your openness and you asked really nicely. That’s actually really cool that you are a shepherd’s daughter, I’ve been fascinated by it before when you mentioned farming in your blog 🙂

      Great reading your comment,
      Jamila

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      • Ahhh I see – I just found the link, will be giving that a wee read through later; yes, you’re right about there being a lot of unethical/ cruel ways to kill animals, and for sure you can never fully tell whether they’re organic as they say they are… I think because of my upbringing in wellie boots, I’ve developed a rather hard heart towards killing animals for meat, also because I used to raise pigs for slaughter and we’ve butchered our own sheep before now so… Totally neutral – hats off to you for doing Veganuary, I wouldn’t last five minutes!

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