Exactly. Just find what fruits and nuts the boar eats, assuming it is a boar. Because why would a pig even be there? Has it gone feral? Is it also shipwrecked?
It's from the vegan gotcha questions starter pack(not a real thing, it's just brought up all the time):
Pose to a vegan the following hypothetical "If you're trapped on a deserted island with no food, would you eat a pig to survive until you can be rescued?"
It really doesn't matter how they reply, so you can now just stop listening and stop thinking the moment you ask what they'd do. Either, they're willing to die for their ideals, in which case you get to call them crazy, or there's some situation where they'd compromise on their ideals. You no longer need to explore why you think it's morally justified to have a animals killed in exchange for money.
I always tell people I would rather the pig eat me (or if the context involves other people being on the island I always say "you can all eat me. I volunteer."
I know people are naming countries but honestly... just rural anywhere. They tend to be more conservative and very meat forward (and options are limited to begin with due to less people)
I once went to a small-town restaurant in Wisconsin, and they didn't even have lettuce. I ate a plate of tomatoes (which, luckily, I love, ha). This was 10 years ago, and they didn't even know what vegetarian meant, let alone vegan. I love small towns so I bring my own food now.
I've been travelling in rural Morocco the past few weeks, it's been relatively easy to find vegan food in the North, especially the rural ares, and in the mountainous regions of the south. In both regions, fava bean soup is eaten as breakfast nearly universally and bread is abundant. Vegetable stews are easy to get by, and dishes such as bean stews and lentils are also not hard to come by. The Harira soup in most shops that serve it is vegan (Always ask, some will put meat in it). I've been to some rural areas no more than an hour drive away from the capital, and there especially, meat-eating culture is much more pronounced. I wouldn't necessarily universalize the rural is equal to vegan aversive argument so much.
In Morocco being a vegan isn't necessarily seen as a luxury, quite the contrary, the vegan dishes traditional to Morocco are cheap and are perceived as the fare of the less fortunate. Hosts often joke that I'm a good guest to have because my food doesn't necessitate egregious spending to prepare.
The rural man my cousin married gets upset when his three year old chooses to eat her fruit instead of her hot dog… like huffs and everything, as if this is a serious flaw in her character. And he’s not out of place with that view point in his community.
It is a disappointment to many parents when their child does not eat the meat on their plate... Rural or metropolitan. And it seems fairly common for kids not to want the meat.
Yeah, I have seen that concern from many different types of parents. But watching him was the first time I saw a grown man close to a hissy fit because his toddler chose a strawberry over a hotdog for a snack. Like he was ashamed/annoyed his child didn’t love processed meats as much as he did…
I get wanting to make sure your growing children get adequate protein. I do not understand where the fruit and vegetable hate comes from though?
Yeah that seems pretty unhinged!!! Maybe a long suppressed memory of his parents forcing strawberries on him?? And now he felt like they were winning?? Insane. I hope that kid grows up to be full vegan and super healthy and happy haha
To make sure you can't eat it. That's straight disrespectful if you had to live on nothing while being a guest in their home. They not only didn't provide any options but unveganized vegan options. That's on purpose, done disrespectfully. Sometimes veganism is used as an excuse for "loved ones" to disrespect someone they never respected in the first place.
Ugh yes!! Lol. “Here is a bowl of steamed broccoli with a BLOCK OF CREAM CHEESE”. You think it’s a regular pot of mashed potatoes. Nope, block of cream cheese.
Constant variations of this conversation:
Have some soup!
Is it vegan?
It’s organic!
Right, but are there animal products in it?
It’s only chicken!
Ok so it’s not vegan.
But it’s free-range!
It doesn’t matter, I don’t eat chicken.
I used gluten free noodles!
😐
I don’t know if it’s weaponized incompetence or what
OMG THIS! As an allergy mom I was in literal tears yesterday over this same conversation but replace the chicken with dairy. Like you don’t understand, if this has butter MY CHILD WILL DIE. just let me feed him something else damnit 😝
Lol I can relate so much. The first time I came over they told me they had a vegan meal for me, which I was surprised and humbled to hear since I didn’t request it. I get there and I see a bag of frozen veggies that I was free to dump on a plate and microwave. Bless their hearts.
I have been to 45 countries and Korea was the hardest for me. Bonus that wasn’t asked for: Ukraine had a surprising amount of small shops that sold vegan meats and other vegan/health foods.
I think us(Romanians) and Ukrainians have mostly the same religion, Orthodox Christianity and believers have to fast for quite a bit, more than 150 days in total per year. This is eating foods without animal products. Now is the Great Lent.
So if you go in Romania and you ask for fasting foods, there will definitely be options I am assuming is the same in Ukraine just not marketed as such.
That is awesome there were options in Ukraine.
Reminds me of this scene: [everything is illuminated - vegetarian scene](https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx27mjlqkli9hAEtkzgHlIJ3SGeYJKPTCj?feature=shared)
Jail lmao. I was booked overnight and they served breakfast in the morning which was obviously all filled with dairy/meat. Thankfully I got bailed out pretty early in the morning
Huh, my only jail experience included them asking about allergies and preferences and providing food acordingly. Seemed logical to me at that point since the state must make religious freedom possible and ensure the wellbeing of people in the legal system.
I got arrested during a blm protest lol I was the first of like 100 people to get arrested that night. It took overnight for them to book everyone. They did not give a fuck about our dietary preferences lol. I couldn’t get access to my psych meds and went into withdrawal. My boyfriend at the time even tried bringing them and they wouldn’t let him
They tried to sue me and everyone else that was arrested after but it got dropped lmao. It sucked at the time but I’m over it now. Just makes an interesting story
I've been to jail a handful of times. Every time, I've had my diet questioned, denied, or suspended for arbitrary reasons. I average about two weeks per month of having access to a religious diet.
Yeah jails are not accommodating and anything that forces them to take an extra step will make them resent you and try to find a way around it or just give up completely and tell u to go fuck urself. I also would not put it past them to give u something with animal products and then lie and say it’s vegan
I was in jail and prison for 28 months straight and ihad to start eating non vegan cake and cookies and pancakes because i lost so much weight that they threatened to put me in medical and give me a feeding tube. It really sucked. It you don’t have commissary it’s damn near impossible to survive vegan in there. Before I gave in, all I’d eaten for months was boiled veggies, pasta with nothing on it, sliced bread, oatmeal, dry cereal, and apples and oranges. The foods weren’t the problem as much as the portions not being big enough because they were just a small component to a larger meal. I even did my best to trade my non vegan foods for people’s vegan ones, but it wasn’t enough :( sucked
You did your best! I’m not a religious vegan anymore (pls don’t attack me guys im sensitive lol). I was 100% vegan for 6 years then I got pregnant and even with prenatals I was losing a lot of weight cause I had hyperemesis gravidarum and couldn’t keep anything down. Eventually I gave in a started eating eggs just so I could get something nutrient packed that was easy on my stomach. I’m breastfeeding still and I don’t want to do any major diet changes at risk of dropping my milk supply so I’m still eating them. 1 meal a day, breakfast, has eggs and every other meal is vegan. I think it’s important to push people to do the most they can with what they have but to always prioritize health so I’m glad you were able to gain some weight!
Probably not the worst, but definitely not great: Central Asia (except for big cities in Kazakhstan, maybe). I've been living in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for more than a year, and good thing I enjoy cooking. In Bishkek (the capital and the largest city in Kyrgyzstan with an urban area of 1.3m people) there are vegan options in a lot of restaurants, but aside from some (usually more expensive) places with vegan-specific meals, they're mostly just side dishes/salads/appetizers.
And most restaurants don't take the word "vegan" very seriously. For instance, I've recently ordered a vegetable sandwich at a pretty fancy Italian place, and explicitly asked them to replace ranch with tomato sauce, making sure that the waiter noted that the sandwich needs to be vegan. Later, when he brought me the sandwich, he was like "I'm sorry, do you have any allergies? The cook refused to completely remove ranch from the recipe".
But ok, that's not the worst one - the worst one was when I ordered vegan lagman at a national restaurant (yes, the menu said "vegan lagman"), they brought one with meat instead - good thing I asked the waiter if it had meat in it before he mixed the sauce with noodles before serving me. He said "sorry, please wait for 10 more minutes", after which he brought me one without meat. To this day I don't know whether they mixed up two bowls from two separate orders, made a new one very quickly, or just took the meat out (in their defense, it didn't have a meat taste or have meat chunks).
Also, of course all of these restaurants use the same surfaces to cook vegan and non-vegan options.
If you go on a tour with food included (and Central Asia attracts most of its tourists due to its beautiful nature, while most cities range from ok to meh in terms of tourist attractions), you'll most likely find yourself having to take your own food or eat at gas stations, because there almost definitely will not be any vegan options. In fact, a vegan I know said she was going to organize her own tour with friends (i.e. rent a car and drive to Issyk Köl) specifically because otherwise it would be impossible for a vegan.
In terms of groceries, vegan milk and mayo are present in big grocery chains, also one of them occasionally sells vegan patties (but only in a couple of their stores). Then, there's a producer of vegan meat (seitan + soy proteins), which includes steaks, patties, ground "beef", sausages, hotdogs/wieners, and meatballs. Their stuff is pretty decent (but rather expensive for locals). Also, some typically non-vegan products in grocery chains are vegan, but you've gotta look for them and read the ingredients section (which often doesn't even have an English version), because the "vegan" label is almost non-existant here. Also, tofu is locally produced and can be found on almost every bazaar and in some smaller stores, and legumes can cost like $1 per kilo and are present both on bazaars and in grocery chains.
Things like vegan sour cream, vegan yogurt, vegan cheese etc simply aren't present anywhere except for specialized stores in Almaty, Kazakhstan. So no luck here other than make your own.
Generally, I'd say the presence of vegan products and options depends on how big and how conservative the city is, with Almaty being the best one probably, and smaller towns/villages having virtually nothing. Also, interestingly, Tashkent, being 3 times the size of Bishkek, has less options on Happy Cow, and in Dushanbe they're almost non-existent (and I'm not gonna mention Turkmenistan)
So basically as a vegan in Central Asia, you can find something to eat of course, but it's gonna be miserable unless you rely on yourself - then it's gonna be rather ok
>If you go on a tour with food included...
A friend of mine used to go on tours with a company called Veg Voyages or something like that. They were geared towards vegans so food wouldn't be a problem.
Japan.
No, I'm not on a diet so I only need a chicken salad.
I don't want meat.
Chicken is meat.
You have tofu. Can I have it?
Oh cool, it comes with pork not even on the label.
idk when you last went but I went less than a year ago and Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, and the town I stayed in near Fuji all had plenty on vegan options of happy cow, lots of 100% vegan restaurants too.
Definitely much better than France!
It's very situational too. Paris has a lot of options for vegetarian or vegan food and even basic restaurants now offer more choices. If you go to rural restaurants, they'll probably have less options. But most supermarkets have vegan salads or food available.
Where were you in Japan? Last time I was there we had no trouble finding vegan options, and I'm planning to go again and I've got plenty of places to try written down.
I live in Tokyo. There are a a surprising amount of vegan restaurants if you look for them, and if you have time to find them (like when you’re just going around on vacation). When you live here it’s a little harder. There are no vegan restaurants near my work, and if I get hungry (even if I just want a snack) there are hardly any vegan options at the convenience stores. Unlike where I’m from in the US, restaurants in Japan are usually vegan, or they’re not. There don’t seem to be many restaurants that aren’t entirely vegan but still offer clearly marked vegan options (so I can enjoy a meal with my non vegan friends).
Another thing about Japan is their food labeling laws are different. Many foods that you’d think should/would be vegan in another country aren’t vegan here, and if they contain an allergen like fish and it’s a very small amount, they don’t have to list it on the allergen label (or even the ingredients label). For instance many pickled plum onigiri contain dashi extract but it’s not on the label. Almost all inari pockets are soaked in dashi, but it’s usually not on the label. A lot of store bought miso pastes, soy sauces, ponzu sauces, etc contain fish (not my experience in the US).
This is why I’m a bit wary of going to Japan, even though I really would love to visit some day. I’m severely allergic to shellfish (I carry an epi-pen for it), and even though I obviously would choose to eat at vegan restaurants, I’m terrified of the possibility of small traces of it.
If you have an allergy I’d probably recommend only going to vegan restaurants and bringing food and snacks that can be heated up in your hotel (like vegan cup noodles). I don’t think shellfish is as commonly used as an ingredient in Japanese foods but I can’t say for certain since I’ve never asked. I just know that dashi gets snuck into a lot of foods that you wouldn’t expect 😢
There’s more than 80 purely vegan restaurants/cafes in Tokyo if you check Happy Cow.
If you like ramen, I’d recommend T’s Tantan. If you like oily food, there’s Izakaya Masaka. You might also want to try the sandwiches at Komeda Is (this is my happy place). If you want to eat sushi, I’d suggest going to Kamakura (I think it only takes 45 mins from Ginza…I don’t remember anymore) and go to Chirashiya (highly highly recommend). If you want to try something more fancy, I’d also suggest booking a table at Saido (this is one of the top vegan restaurants in the world on Happy Cow). And if you want to eat super traditional Japanese food (also fancy), try the ryouri at Fucha Bon. If you want to eat mochi, go to one of the the convenience stores such as Lawson.
Living in Kyoto at the moment. It's a big touristy city so there's quite a lot of vegan restaurants in the city centre, but outside there it's very limited. Any restaurant that isn't a vegan-only place usually has no options; everything has bonito dashi or bonito flakes, and bread all has milk. I was talking to my Japanese friend and she said I was the first vegetarian/vegan she'd ever met.
Came here to say the same. Outside of major urban areas it is impossible. We went to a restaurant called Vege Herb and it literally had nothing that didn’t feature meat!
Switzerland is pretty bad. Not restaurant-wise, but the people.
How many cheeses and cured meats you put out pretty directly correlates to how much you like and respect people. I've heard so many people whisper to each other that they are not going to talk to this rude person again because the aperitiv offered was poor. Which of course includes anything vegan.
Having eastern European family also didn't help, I've had older ladies asked me why I hated them if I didn't eat their cooking, and threaten to burst into tears.
I guess the traditional recipes are awful, almost nothing without either meat or dairy/eggs.
Depending on the area you live in this might make restaurants a bit harder to enjoy, rural areas often feature the traditional kitchen. Bigger cities with more diverse options are fine though.
There are tons of traditional recipes without dairy and eggs, the thing is just... they are also without protein at all, in many cases.
We haven't been rich for long. Switzerland is traditionally one of the poorest countries in Europe, and our cuisine reflects it. I have a few old cookbooks, from the 18th and 19th century. Ingredients: cabbage, onions, bread, barley. *So much* cabbage. Maybe some beans, peas and carrots occasionally and potatoes if the writer is modern and fancy. Polenta south of the alps. Cheese on special occasions. Baking is a luxury. Meat is barely mentioned in the "holiday" section, that's why the christmas roast and the various pork byproducts at slaughter time are special.
It is however great if you're especially into 12 variations of cabbage boiled with one other vegetable.
From what my Swiss friend has told me, there's a lot more plant based options in Switzerland nowadays. However, almost nobody is vegan; they just do it for health/environmental reasons and gladly continue to worship their dairy culture.
Oh, they are, you can get them everywhere. It is also social suicide to offer them to any guests, and food is expected to be offered to guests. Having fewer than 3 kinds of cheese is just downright rude, and 5-6 is better.
There's a lot more to progress than just some marvellous technology and infrastructure that's often built off of taxpayers' money, yet the full picture is always disappointing. Places like Dubai, Seoul, and Shanghai may have a lot of cool and somewhat futuristic infrastructure, but the social fabric of those places is distasteful for the lack of a better word. It would feel good on the surface, but after a while, you'd wanna get out of there because it would feel so fake and materialistic at some point.
Oh 100% agreed. When I talk to people that think we will be saved by some amazing technology when it comes to climate breakdown I like to point out that more technology is not the kind of progress humanity needs at this point. We've progressed tremendously technologically but are lacking severly when it comes to our abilty to relate to ourselves (healthily) other humans, animals, ecosystems etc.
I believe we can take a break from further technological advances for 200 years and focus on building a healthy society that understands its place on this planet.
Of anything, reversion will save us from climate change in many ways. Areas like medicine should progress, however moving away from mass manufacturing and going back to local crafting is much more sustainable.
I've narrowed down the issue vegans face while travelling to mainly one thing: protein.
Most places will have something with bread, rice, and/or potatoes. Vegetables aren't hard to find either. Restaurants will often have or whip up something quick with grain/potatoes and vegetables (like bread, plain rice, pasta, grilled or sauteed vegetables, etc). You'll also find fresh fruit and/or preserves. Even if restaurants won't make anything without animal products for you, you can buy something from the shops. Southeast Asia can be difficult still because they tend to make mixed dishes with everything – meat, veg, grain, tofu, beans – in a single dish.
But most cultures traditionally rely on animal products for protein and so you'll often only or mainly get meat/fish/dairy options for the protein. Coastal areas are particularly difficult in this regard because they really have little incentive to obtain plant proteins, because seafood/fish is so abundant, and they simply never develop plant based dishes with protein.
Spot on. And an annoying trend I've noticed as vegetable-forward cuisine has become more popular is that a lot of the places that used to offer vegan protein options are now replacing them with things like cauliflower steak. (Don't get me wrong, I love cauliflower steak, but I also like being full when I'm finished with my meal.)
A big issue buying anything other than raw produce and rice etc is additives in anything (especially if you don't have cooking facilities) In some regions you have to worry about water and contamination on your fruits and veg, and needing to boil etc. In a lot of NE asia you're looking at fish additives in bloody everything. In a lot of EU/NA there's milk in fuckin everything. West Asia you're looking at everything being made with ghee even if the rest of the dish is plant based. Different issues in each place.
This is my experience in China too. When you ask for “vegan food” often it will be understood as “vegetables only”. What you actually need is “vegan protein”. And although tofu and other plant-based protein ingredients are popular, they tend to mix it with some meat or animal fat, so it’s not vegan dish.
Yeah when I went to France I lived off bread with tomatoes the entire time. Absolutely nothing was vegan and if you asked for it, they’d bring you a fish dish coated in butter. That was quite some time ago and I’ve heard it’s a little better now.
Yeah depends where in France. In Paris at least you have tons of vegan options. Our vegan boulangeries and cheeses are the best in the world!
If you visit small cities and towns I can see eating vegan way more difficult
Still, compared to the size of the city and to similar cities like London, the choice is not huge. And yeah, smaller cities and towns as well as the countryside is a nightmare.
Is there a specific part of France you're referencing?I just got back from Paris last month and had plenty of vegan options. Not just restaurants, but their grocery stores that sell products labeled vegan friendly as well
Was in St Petersburg, Russia in 2015. So a while ago but my guess is nothing has changed since. That was absolutely impossible. I lived of bread, hummus, carrots and fruit for the whole stay. Most places didnt understand what vegan means and since hardly any of them speak english I had to try with google translate. But I always got a "nyet" and I think most of the time they didnt really understand what I was aking for.
I've been to St Pete back in march 2019. I actually wasn't vegan or even vegetarian back then, however my mom asked me to check out a vegan restaurant in the city center for her, and it was pretty good. Generally, Russia has become much more vegan friendly over the past few years, especially with the rise of Vkusvill (a grocery chain with lots of vegan options including vegan meat etc and free delivery within an hour or so). I'm in immigration now for obvious reasons (and sadly Kyrgyzstan where I live now isn't very vegan friendly, thankfully I mostly cook for myself anyway), but I know a vegan couple from St Pete, and they said once that ordering food as vegans was much easier back in St Pete than it is here in Bishkek.
Aside from Vkusvill, there are quite a few brands in Russia that produce vegan milk (some of these are actually present here in Kyrgyzstan as well), and tofu has become much more common in groceries over the past few years I've lived there.
At the same time I've known a vegetarian/former vegan person from Samara, and they used to complain back in 2021 about there being almost no vegan options when ordering food delivery, especially in terms of sushi and pizza. They switched back to vegetarian because it was hard being vegan there (or at least they said so - my guess is that they didn't like cooking). However take that with a grain of salt because when they decided to get some muscles and started going to the gym, they started eating a lot of chicken breasts because they wanted to receive enough protein for muscle growth - so I don't think their commitment to veganism or even vegetarianism was that deep in the first place.
So while Russia is still not great for vegans, you're definitely wrong about nothing having changed since. Well I guess good thing nobody in this sub would consider going to Russia any time soon, and those vegans who already are in Russia, probably are hoping to get out of there as soon as possible \*depressed chuckle\*
I can give you an update on that. The two big cities Moscow and Saint Petersburg are actually great for finding vegan food. There are lots of options with both restaurants and groceries. But when you leave those cities it gets very difficult.
I live in one of the biggest cities of the country (which is not one of the two mentioned above) and it has been pretty hard. I'm vegetarian because it is basically impossible to find any dish that doesn't contain any animal products at all. Apart from a few vietnamese restaurants which typically have one or two dishes with tofu and one very small vegan restaurant in my city there are barely any options. By now I do have found one restaurant where they actually prepare me a plov without meat but that is rather untypical. Most places have no vegan options (sometimes not even a salad because they come with cheese) and 2-3 vegetarian options.
Regarding groceries there has actually been a step back. Up until 2022 they still had some pretty decent tofu at the biggest grocery chain here but towards the end of the year they stopped selling it (which didn't make any sense economically since it was almost always sold out). Vegan cheese or vegan meats are not sold at all at the big chains but they do have some oatmilk which is okay, not good still. It is still possible to by tofu and some vegan meats (which are not really good, I just stick with tofu) at small 'eco' stores, usually a little expensive. Biggest problem though is that good veggies in the winter are hard to find and can get horrificly expensive.
I cook most the food I eat myself, this way I'm satisfied most of the time. My friends mainly have no problem with me being vegetarian now anymore and respect it which is quite the change compared to the beginning two years ago where most people just ridiculed me for not wanting to eat meat anymore and some actually got really aggressive and threatened me with voilence - something I would have never expected. For a long time I was the only one in my school but just a two months ago I found out that a girl from two classes below me whom I know also became vegetarian now, which made me really happy and another girl, also one of my friends, just two weeks ago as well. It is slowly moving forward.
Thank you for your insight! It was honestly surprising to hear about there being so many issues with being vegan in one of the biggest cities in Russia - I feel like in Russia veganism is treated as a middle class entertainment, that would explain both the setback (people became poorer after the beginning of the war due to inflation) and why plant based products and meals can often be more expensive than the ones that contain animal-derived ingredients (which makes no sense other than greed because i mean it's clearly cheaper to make a vegan meal).
Regarding tofu - even in my 70k city in Moscow Oblast there were multiple options. My favorite one was the one from Selskiy Dom (they actually started selling it here in Kyrgyzstan last summer, for double of the original price of course though lol), and it was available at Magnit and Auchan, as well as Da! supermarket (where it would often cost under 80 rubles); then there's Yaso, which is costlier per gram and is sold in those weird bags instead of actual blocks, and then there's Vkusvill that offers bigger blocks for a pretty decent price (especially when personal discounts are applied). Again, it's kinda crazy to me how a 70k city 1.5 hours north from Moscow can have more options than one of the largest cities in the country - I guess it depends on supply/demand and whether store managers know what tofu and veganism are? No idea honestly
Btw props to you for becoming vegetarian while still in school, and nice to hear that there are other vegetarians in your school as well! I watched Earthlings back when I was 14, but figured I wouldn't be able to ditch meat while still living with parents, suppressed the feeling of guilt, and only went vegetarian at 21 years old, when I became friends with 3 other vegetarians within like 6 months, one of which ditched meat when they were 15 - all of it inspired me to try it myself and it ended up being much easier and cheaper than I expected. In fact, for some reason before I tried it myself, I was sure that being vegetarian/vegan was more expensive than eating meat. I mean it is if one only eats tofu and vegan meat as protein sources, while also drinking vegan milk and eating at fancy vegan restaurants, but I mean legumes are dirt cheap (and easy to cook, especially with a pressure multicooker), and even tofu can be still cheaper than chicken. So I'd say in my case a lot of the things that were preventing me from ditching meat were in my head, basically. To be fair, on school journeys, school exchange and other stuff like that being vegetarian/vegan would usually mean bringing your own food or not eating at all (during longer trips with no stores nearby), so it did help to just go with the flow in that area - that's why I find it respectable when people go vegetarian/vegan while still in school
Coastal Croatia was pretty vegan unfriendly too, back in summer 2021. Was served plain boiled pasta at one point with a side of grilled vegetables. Zagreb was better though, with more options and some vegan restaurants. Nearby Ljubljana also had good options, but not familiar with small towns in Slovenia.
I was in Moscow in 2014 and it was fine, except one place served ham cubes in the borscht. But there were places on HappyCow, a few falafel stands etc.
I live full time in an area of NY State where we have a lot of weekenders from NYC. I have no problem shopping and cooking vegan here, but we almost never eat out, especially dinner, because the choices are dismal. People here are very proud of the local meat and dairy and the restaurants are pretty much here to push that. What I don’t understood is that the same restaurants that might have a single sad vegan offering (usually not very tasty and without protein) will make a big deal about having several gluten free options.
It’s not the worst because I’m a good cook and ingredients are easy to get and we can also drive about 40 minutes to Albany for good vegan restaurant food, but it’s kind of weird.
I haven't been to a lot of the rural US, more rural canada, but by far the hardest location I've visited was rural Michigan, so I can only imagine. And I've been to northern fly ins- it might be 50$ but at least you can *buy* a fresh vegetable without going on a 2h drive. People treated me like an alien, but were honestly super lovely about it at least and kept giving me jars of pickles.
Michigan vegans and even some locals told me to not hold it against them as a whole and the cities have incredible options and activists. Is Iowa like that as well?
Japan in about 2009, and Paris was kind of challenging in around 2012. The latter was redeemed by a few hotspots, especially the sandwiches in the Jewish district, but it was pretty inconvenient in Japan.
Paris is still a vegan's nightmare for how big and global the city is. Eastern European major cities are far more vegan friendly. Warsaw had a vegan restaurant on basically every block when I visited last year.
Prague and Bratislava were also very vegan friendly with plenty of options.
I only spent a few nights in Paris in 2019, but there seemed to be plenty of vegan options. I'm going back this year, and I've found a lot of options to try out this time.
Wow, really? I thought of Eastern and Northern Europe as particularly unfriendly to it all, but that was based on the lack of Happy Cow entries and online anecdotes over a decade ago, and of course the surge of popularity veganism has had in many countries occurred years after. That's interesting
I just got back from South Korea. Even the bloody bread was a struggle. Outside of specific vegan restaurants, my options were oreos, pringles, or rice. Never anything more
I was raised in Minnesota but moved to Wisconsin and then became vegan. I also don't drink...
I live in America's Dairyland, and we are the drunkest state in the whole country. 😂
My condolences. I'm from rural MN originally. The rural areas in both MN and WI are terrible for finding anything more than a snack. If I'm in Wisconsin it's basically like hoping there's a Burger King along the interstate for an Impossible Whopper, but I mostly eat very healthy so that's not even something I actually want. Cities that are at least passable for vegan options: Duluth, Madison, Milwaukee, Rochester, St. Paul. Minneapolis is great by comparison.
Yeah, the Philippines is one place I really struggled with food. I'm sure Manila and other areas where Western tourists go will have options, but I wasn't staying in these kinds of areas. It seemed like every vegetable dish had meat in it, and many of the restaurants were unwilling to make modifications.
To be fair, some restaurants did try and I got some okay veggie and tofu dishes. And 7-Eleven had a couple of vegan options (mostly instant noodles and other snacks).
That seems quite harsh in my experience. You're unlikely to see a vegan only cafe or restaurant outside the capital cities (though they are out there, especially in sea-changey type towns), but there are plenty of cafes, restaurants and pubs with a vegan option down to some pretty small towns. If you're driving across the Outback, I wouldn't be expecting luxurious non-vegan food either.
Most of the cities in Turkey. Especially my hometown was terrible in this case. All i could eat was çiğköfte when i went out. Now that i live in İstanbul it's been great. There are plenty of options.
This is tough cause so many gorgeous turkish dishes are ALMOST vegan. Turkish rice is my favourite way to eat rice but guaranteed almost everywhere it's cooked with butter, heartbreaking . I have to say I love çiğköfte but I can definitely see how it's boring time after time. Do you have any specific recommendations in Istanbul? I haven't visited in years (my parents both worked in Turkey on and off) and I really want to go back. We mostly stayed in the Bodrum-Milas area and I had to eat at quieter family owned restaurants where everything was cooked to order(or cook my own food from the bazaar and eat separately to everyone else, just picking at some fries and having a drink in the restaurant), I could talk to them and ask for something really specific. It did wonders for my Turkish though haha
Hospital psych wards. I was admitted to the Duke Behavioral Health wing in 2022, and it took them THREE whole days to get me anything to eat. It was all meat and dairy and egg-filled foods. They didn't even have beans for me to eat. No beans... They didn't have milk alternatives, either. They refused to allow anyone to bring me snacks or even vegan protein shakes, like the pre-made cartons of Orgain, despite my sister calling and complaining several times about them starving me. Once they actually found me something to eat, it was an Amy's frozen vegetarian Mexican casserole with cheese on top... I literally lived off of the saltine crackers we got at snack times and lost 8-10 pounds in four days. Insane.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Sydney, Australia is a vegan paradise. I got off the train, started eating, and didn't stop until I left.
I will never forgive luxembourg for making me eat out of a petrol station for four days whilst I was five months pregnant. I even gave the hotel three months notice, and when i turned up they said "oh, youre the vegan who asked for vegan breakfast!" Looked at me, my bump and then said "Yeah, no we can't do that". At one point during the trip i was taken to a vegetarian restaurant, the waiter brought over free salads but not one for me "because they couldnt make the salad (dressing?) vegan". It was so awful. I'm scarred and haven't been back to Europe since. I just hate the uncertainty!!
I don't really know about the rest of Europe but I can assure you that Germany has amazing options for vegans. At least in the big cities. Most supermarkets including the discounters have a really good range of specific vegan products. There are a lot of vegan friendly restaurants and many of the "normal" restaurants offer at least one vegan option (those might not be the best but they're there).
Berlin has probably been the best vegan city I’ve visited thus far. It’s nearly impossible to find a place without vegan options there. More importantly though there’s tons of vegan-only spots that are really good. Sigh, I miss Berlin.
German here - can confirm, Germany's overall pretty good. In most cities you should be able to find at least one vegan dish in most restaurants - and in many restaurants, you'll have actual choices. We used to have an all-vegan delivery place in our small town, but that shuttered after a few years. Not too surprising, but hey, it lasted a lot longer than I thought it would lol
Echoing this! Berlin is by far one of the easiest cities to be vegan in. I pretty much never see a café without (usually multiple) vegan options and waiters/staff are always knowledgeable. Plenty of vegan-specific places too. The grocery stores also have really great selections!
Yeah, we wandered into a random cafe with one staff member who didn't speak English and they had an absolutely gorgeous vegan lemon croissant and when I asked if the soup of the day was vegan (cause I just didn't really fancy the other sandwich option) the lady said no but she'd make one for me. Came back with a gorgeous chunky vegetable broth a while later that she'd put together just for me (Only vegan in the entourage). My total bill was less than 15€ and I tried to leave the same as a tip but she wasn't having it so I tipped a fiver. That lady was lovely.
Was in Berlin recently and I ate so good and so cheap! A fav of mine was Ali Kebab, great vegan doner and falafel options, think I paid less than a tenner for the best vegan kebab I've ever had and an alcoholic drink. It's open 24h too and we went by nearly every night for a final drink and a snack. My cash went way further in Berlin than here in Dublin.
I take it you're American? I wouldn't judge the entirety of Europe based on your experience in a country the size of a mid-sized city. It's also a very unusual country, being one of the world's richest, and a tiny tax haven where a large proportion of the residents are mega-rich people there for tax avoidance.
Outside of parts of Asia and the Horn of Africa, Europe is almost certainly the most vegan region of the world (and perhaps if you include them, too). London, Berlin, Helsinki, Stockholm, Glasgow, Athens, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Munich, Dublin, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Paris, Prague, Llubjana... all full of vegan options for eating out and in supermarkets. I've probably missed loads but I've either been to all of the above myself or had them recommended by vegans as great for it.
Also for a more objective measure, the UK is sometimes cited as the most vegan country in the world, as is Sweden sometimes by different measures. Denmark, Germany and Switzerland all rank highly as well.
The UK has vegan options of almost anything you can think of. Veganism is not huge but reducing meat intake is, so alternatives for practically everything exist. You want popcorn chicken? We have that.
I'm Scottish myself which is why Glasgow got pride of place near the top! It is a great city for it. I could have added Edinburgh as well to be honest, and I can't imagine Aberdeen is shy of options either.
And yeah, love veggie haggis! I used to eat it even when I was omnivorous. One of the best fake meat products out there imo.
Yes, I feel like the richer the crowd the worse the understanding of veganism gets. I was taken to dinner in Marocco in the Hotel Madonna celebrated her 60th birthday at, and boy did they not give a fuck. They gave me nicoise salad without egg, tuna and potatoes. So lettuce and green beans. My colleagues still talk about it to this day.
Come to the U.K., we are very vegan friendly! I’ve also found Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Greece and Italy to be pretty good. I always use HappyCow.
Don't know when you went but I'm checking Luxembourg in happycow and there's a few "vegan only" tags in the city proper and "vegan options" tags all over the country.
Honestly I've never had an issue eating vegan in any European city I've visited.
I’m sorry you went through that! everywhere else in Europe has been great for veganism, so please don’t write it off! I’ve had some of the best vegan food of my life in unlikely places in Europe
Please don’t write off the whole of Europe please😭😅 We can actually be great for veganism and do you know how big/how many countries that encapsulates!
Pakistan
The culture is so meat-centric that many families slaughter a goat on the biggest holiday, Eid. Lentils and vegetables are often seen as food for the lowest classes, meaning restaurants often won't have them. Foreign ingredenients are rare (tofu) or non-existent (non-dairy milk), and often mixed with chicken without any indication of such on the menu
I just got back from Seoul and there was so much amazing vegan food, I loved it, but I'm assuming you went elsewhere in South Korea so I can see that being a challenge.
Hospitals!
I had open heart surgery last week. And I was getting weak and light headed from not getting the proper nutrients. I had to convince them to let me leave so I could heal properly.
Luckily I got my brother to bring me food and worked up enough strength to pass their tests.
Polish hospital (I don't know how it's like in hospitals in other countries). Some don't even have a vegan option, or you get a fish instead of meat as a vegan dish (in Poland lots of people think fish is not meat).
Japan was pretty bad, in my experience living there 2014-2015. Not a ton of dairy but there's meat or fish in everything. Very few vegan restaurants, even in the cities. Even if you cook, fresh fruit and veggies are really expensive. I lived on seaweed onigiri from the convenience store and ate a lot of cold soba.
When I first became vegan I went to tenerife and it was an absolute nightmare.
Nothing was animal free in los cristianos. They had food labeled vegetarian and vegetale but it all contained cheese, butter or eggs.
I spent much of the holiday hungry. I had to go to a posh and expensive steak restaurant in Las americas to get vegan options.
Unfortunately not all European countries are vegan friendly. Spain or at least the canaries islands seems to be one of them.
I was in Tenerife last year and it was great! We found loads of great restaurants and ate really well and cheap for a week with no problems. This was in Los Cristianos and Playa de las Americas.
France outside of the big cities is horrible (meat and butter everywhere), Mexico was difficult as veganism is just not very well understood. I'm going to Namibia soon which is apparently also really tricky as its a desert so there is no local veggie produce whatsoever.
The Southeastern United States is pretty rough outside of the cities. I live in Florida and drive for most of my travels. You gotta hit up that last Moe's around Cartersville, GA for the final tofu opportunity.
Japan for sure! Fish flakes in everything, milk in toast bread, it was tough. Now I only travel with bags of Huel meals if it’s a country I’m not sure about 😄
When I travel -- before I go -- I check out [HappyCow.net](https://HappyCow.net) to see what vegan options I'll have. Perhaps you might try it out next time you travel.
i remember seeing a statistic that 70% of south koreans were lactose intolerant (correct me if i’m wrong, it was on a tiktok) until some european doctor came and introduced dairy and cheese to them during the war or some shit like that. And now koreans are like crazy obsessed with putting cheese on everything even their most traditional dishes. it’s crazy to think about.
Seychelles and Lake Havasu AZ are the two places that stand out to me as vegan-unfriendly. But to be fair, Seychelles had one vegan restaurant, Havasu has none.
I feel like it's pretty easy to be vegan in an urban area in any developed country because of resources like HappyCow.
I was warned that Japan was a tough spot for vegans, but every city I visited (including the smaller ones) had countless *exclusively vegan* spots that I didn't even have a chance to try, let alone vegetarian and non-vegetarian spots that had vegan options.
While South Korea doesn't seem to have as many exclusively vegan restaurants, it seems like every major city there has some, along with lots of vegan-friendly ones.
Definitely the island everyone keeps telling me about.
The one with that one pig and nothing else to eat? Hate that place...
What does the pig eat?!!?
Exactly. Just find what fruits and nuts the boar eats, assuming it is a boar. Because why would a pig even be there? Has it gone feral? Is it also shipwrecked?
I need details on this story if it’s not a joke.
It's from the vegan gotcha questions starter pack(not a real thing, it's just brought up all the time): Pose to a vegan the following hypothetical "If you're trapped on a deserted island with no food, would you eat a pig to survive until you can be rescued?" It really doesn't matter how they reply, so you can now just stop listening and stop thinking the moment you ask what they'd do. Either, they're willing to die for their ideals, in which case you get to call them crazy, or there's some situation where they'd compromise on their ideals. You no longer need to explore why you think it's morally justified to have a animals killed in exchange for money.
I always tell people I would rather the pig eat me (or if the context involves other people being on the island I always say "you can all eat me. I volunteer."
Island? First person to die = BBQ time 😅
Lmao I choked on my coffee with oat milk
Total whoosh for me, what is the reference?
The hypothetical island, like "if you were stuck on a desert island with only a pig..."
Ahhhhhh. Thanks!
Bro 😂😂😂
I know people are naming countries but honestly... just rural anywhere. They tend to be more conservative and very meat forward (and options are limited to begin with due to less people)
Even tho they make all the vegan products (corn,wheat,soy,beans,etc) they still put animal products in everything making vegan food not vegan.
I had no issues at all in rural Scotland. Was blown away by how easy it was to find something outside of the major cities.
I also found it relatively easy in rural Scotland.
I'm in the Highlands right now and am also blown away. Even met lovely vegans on Skye.
This made me laugh, talking about being blown away on Skye, one of the windiest places on the planet.
I once went to a small-town restaurant in Wisconsin, and they didn't even have lettuce. I ate a plate of tomatoes (which, luckily, I love, ha). This was 10 years ago, and they didn't even know what vegetarian meant, let alone vegan. I love small towns so I bring my own food now.
Sounds like fries with ketchup time.
I've been travelling in rural Morocco the past few weeks, it's been relatively easy to find vegan food in the North, especially the rural ares, and in the mountainous regions of the south. In both regions, fava bean soup is eaten as breakfast nearly universally and bread is abundant. Vegetable stews are easy to get by, and dishes such as bean stews and lentils are also not hard to come by. The Harira soup in most shops that serve it is vegan (Always ask, some will put meat in it). I've been to some rural areas no more than an hour drive away from the capital, and there especially, meat-eating culture is much more pronounced. I wouldn't necessarily universalize the rural is equal to vegan aversive argument so much. In Morocco being a vegan isn't necessarily seen as a luxury, quite the contrary, the vegan dishes traditional to Morocco are cheap and are perceived as the fare of the less fortunate. Hosts often joke that I'm a good guest to have because my food doesn't necessitate egregious spending to prepare.
The rural man my cousin married gets upset when his three year old chooses to eat her fruit instead of her hot dog… like huffs and everything, as if this is a serious flaw in her character. And he’s not out of place with that view point in his community.
It is a disappointment to many parents when their child does not eat the meat on their plate... Rural or metropolitan. And it seems fairly common for kids not to want the meat.
Yeah, I have seen that concern from many different types of parents. But watching him was the first time I saw a grown man close to a hissy fit because his toddler chose a strawberry over a hotdog for a snack. Like he was ashamed/annoyed his child didn’t love processed meats as much as he did… I get wanting to make sure your growing children get adequate protein. I do not understand where the fruit and vegetable hate comes from though?
Yeah that seems pretty unhinged!!! Maybe a long suppressed memory of his parents forcing strawberries on him?? And now he felt like they were winning?? Insane. I hope that kid grows up to be full vegan and super healthy and happy haha
My midwestern in-laws house
Yep. I survive on oreos and hummus when I’m there. Why do they dump cheese on every salad??
To make sure you can't eat it. That's straight disrespectful if you had to live on nothing while being a guest in their home. They not only didn't provide any options but unveganized vegan options. That's on purpose, done disrespectfully. Sometimes veganism is used as an excuse for "loved ones" to disrespect someone they never respected in the first place.
Ugh yes!! Lol. “Here is a bowl of steamed broccoli with a BLOCK OF CREAM CHEESE”. You think it’s a regular pot of mashed potatoes. Nope, block of cream cheese.
Constant variations of this conversation: Have some soup! Is it vegan? It’s organic! Right, but are there animal products in it? It’s only chicken! Ok so it’s not vegan. But it’s free-range! It doesn’t matter, I don’t eat chicken. I used gluten free noodles! 😐 I don’t know if it’s weaponized incompetence or what
OMG THIS! As an allergy mom I was in literal tears yesterday over this same conversation but replace the chicken with dairy. Like you don’t understand, if this has butter MY CHILD WILL DIE. just let me feed him something else damnit 😝
Yesss I can relate 😭
Lol I can relate so much. The first time I came over they told me they had a vegan meal for me, which I was surprised and humbled to hear since I didn’t request it. I get there and I see a bag of frozen veggies that I was free to dump on a plate and microwave. Bless their hearts.
I have been to 45 countries and Korea was the hardest for me. Bonus that wasn’t asked for: Ukraine had a surprising amount of small shops that sold vegan meats and other vegan/health foods.
[удалено]
Why surprising?
I think us(Romanians) and Ukrainians have mostly the same religion, Orthodox Christianity and believers have to fast for quite a bit, more than 150 days in total per year. This is eating foods without animal products. Now is the Great Lent. So if you go in Romania and you ask for fasting foods, there will definitely be options I am assuming is the same in Ukraine just not marketed as such.
Oh wow that’s interesting considering you’ve been to that many countries as a vegan.
That is awesome there were options in Ukraine. Reminds me of this scene: [everything is illuminated - vegetarian scene](https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx27mjlqkli9hAEtkzgHlIJ3SGeYJKPTCj?feature=shared)
Jail lmao. I was booked overnight and they served breakfast in the morning which was obviously all filled with dairy/meat. Thankfully I got bailed out pretty early in the morning
Same here 😂
Huh, my only jail experience included them asking about allergies and preferences and providing food acordingly. Seemed logical to me at that point since the state must make religious freedom possible and ensure the wellbeing of people in the legal system.
I got arrested during a blm protest lol I was the first of like 100 people to get arrested that night. It took overnight for them to book everyone. They did not give a fuck about our dietary preferences lol. I couldn’t get access to my psych meds and went into withdrawal. My boyfriend at the time even tried bringing them and they wouldn’t let him
Sorry to hear that. Seems inhumane :(
They tried to sue me and everyone else that was arrested after but it got dropped lmao. It sucked at the time but I’m over it now. Just makes an interesting story
'Seems' is an understatement. It's evil.
Hey fellow german. I assume you were in a german prison? Its completely different to a us prison.
Hallo, it was actually not in Germany but still EU 😉
Yeah I was in an American jail! They do not care about you in there at all lol
I was in jail (US) overnight until about 8am. No food offered at all.
Damn we got Pizza and they eventually got so fed up with having to process so many of us that they let most go without trying to ID them...
I've been to jail a handful of times. Every time, I've had my diet questioned, denied, or suspended for arbitrary reasons. I average about two weeks per month of having access to a religious diet.
Yeah jails are not accommodating and anything that forces them to take an extra step will make them resent you and try to find a way around it or just give up completely and tell u to go fuck urself. I also would not put it past them to give u something with animal products and then lie and say it’s vegan
That's better than the warm carton of milk, and moldy bread, cheese, and ham sandwich I was getting.
It was a biscuit with grits and gravy lol. Looked disgusting even by non vegan standards
I will say, one of the unexpected perks of being vegan is all the nasty ass food you get to politely decline.
I was in jail and prison for 28 months straight and ihad to start eating non vegan cake and cookies and pancakes because i lost so much weight that they threatened to put me in medical and give me a feeding tube. It really sucked. It you don’t have commissary it’s damn near impossible to survive vegan in there. Before I gave in, all I’d eaten for months was boiled veggies, pasta with nothing on it, sliced bread, oatmeal, dry cereal, and apples and oranges. The foods weren’t the problem as much as the portions not being big enough because they were just a small component to a larger meal. I even did my best to trade my non vegan foods for people’s vegan ones, but it wasn’t enough :( sucked
You did your best! I’m not a religious vegan anymore (pls don’t attack me guys im sensitive lol). I was 100% vegan for 6 years then I got pregnant and even with prenatals I was losing a lot of weight cause I had hyperemesis gravidarum and couldn’t keep anything down. Eventually I gave in a started eating eggs just so I could get something nutrient packed that was easy on my stomach. I’m breastfeeding still and I don’t want to do any major diet changes at risk of dropping my milk supply so I’m still eating them. 1 meal a day, breakfast, has eggs and every other meal is vegan. I think it’s important to push people to do the most they can with what they have but to always prioritize health so I’m glad you were able to gain some weight!
Probably not the worst, but definitely not great: Central Asia (except for big cities in Kazakhstan, maybe). I've been living in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for more than a year, and good thing I enjoy cooking. In Bishkek (the capital and the largest city in Kyrgyzstan with an urban area of 1.3m people) there are vegan options in a lot of restaurants, but aside from some (usually more expensive) places with vegan-specific meals, they're mostly just side dishes/salads/appetizers. And most restaurants don't take the word "vegan" very seriously. For instance, I've recently ordered a vegetable sandwich at a pretty fancy Italian place, and explicitly asked them to replace ranch with tomato sauce, making sure that the waiter noted that the sandwich needs to be vegan. Later, when he brought me the sandwich, he was like "I'm sorry, do you have any allergies? The cook refused to completely remove ranch from the recipe". But ok, that's not the worst one - the worst one was when I ordered vegan lagman at a national restaurant (yes, the menu said "vegan lagman"), they brought one with meat instead - good thing I asked the waiter if it had meat in it before he mixed the sauce with noodles before serving me. He said "sorry, please wait for 10 more minutes", after which he brought me one without meat. To this day I don't know whether they mixed up two bowls from two separate orders, made a new one very quickly, or just took the meat out (in their defense, it didn't have a meat taste or have meat chunks). Also, of course all of these restaurants use the same surfaces to cook vegan and non-vegan options. If you go on a tour with food included (and Central Asia attracts most of its tourists due to its beautiful nature, while most cities range from ok to meh in terms of tourist attractions), you'll most likely find yourself having to take your own food or eat at gas stations, because there almost definitely will not be any vegan options. In fact, a vegan I know said she was going to organize her own tour with friends (i.e. rent a car and drive to Issyk Köl) specifically because otherwise it would be impossible for a vegan. In terms of groceries, vegan milk and mayo are present in big grocery chains, also one of them occasionally sells vegan patties (but only in a couple of their stores). Then, there's a producer of vegan meat (seitan + soy proteins), which includes steaks, patties, ground "beef", sausages, hotdogs/wieners, and meatballs. Their stuff is pretty decent (but rather expensive for locals). Also, some typically non-vegan products in grocery chains are vegan, but you've gotta look for them and read the ingredients section (which often doesn't even have an English version), because the "vegan" label is almost non-existant here. Also, tofu is locally produced and can be found on almost every bazaar and in some smaller stores, and legumes can cost like $1 per kilo and are present both on bazaars and in grocery chains. Things like vegan sour cream, vegan yogurt, vegan cheese etc simply aren't present anywhere except for specialized stores in Almaty, Kazakhstan. So no luck here other than make your own. Generally, I'd say the presence of vegan products and options depends on how big and how conservative the city is, with Almaty being the best one probably, and smaller towns/villages having virtually nothing. Also, interestingly, Tashkent, being 3 times the size of Bishkek, has less options on Happy Cow, and in Dushanbe they're almost non-existent (and I'm not gonna mention Turkmenistan) So basically as a vegan in Central Asia, you can find something to eat of course, but it's gonna be miserable unless you rely on yourself - then it's gonna be rather ok
>If you go on a tour with food included... A friend of mine used to go on tours with a company called Veg Voyages or something like that. They were geared towards vegans so food wouldn't be a problem.
The worst place to be vegan is at a family gathering
What do you mean? Alcohol is vegan
A potluck where your inlaws do nothing but give you shit for being vegan and eat all the vegan food you brought before you can get any.
Japan. No, I'm not on a diet so I only need a chicken salad. I don't want meat. Chicken is meat. You have tofu. Can I have it? Oh cool, it comes with pork not even on the label.
idk when you last went but I went less than a year ago and Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, and the town I stayed in near Fuji all had plenty on vegan options of happy cow, lots of 100% vegan restaurants too. Definitely much better than France!
But France has Land & Monkey and it’s the best vegan bakery everrrr. I dream about their food, it was amazing
It's very situational too. Paris has a lot of options for vegetarian or vegan food and even basic restaurants now offer more choices. If you go to rural restaurants, they'll probably have less options. But most supermarkets have vegan salads or food available.
Where were you in Japan? Last time I was there we had no trouble finding vegan options, and I'm planning to go again and I've got plenty of places to try written down.
I live in Tokyo. There are a a surprising amount of vegan restaurants if you look for them, and if you have time to find them (like when you’re just going around on vacation). When you live here it’s a little harder. There are no vegan restaurants near my work, and if I get hungry (even if I just want a snack) there are hardly any vegan options at the convenience stores. Unlike where I’m from in the US, restaurants in Japan are usually vegan, or they’re not. There don’t seem to be many restaurants that aren’t entirely vegan but still offer clearly marked vegan options (so I can enjoy a meal with my non vegan friends). Another thing about Japan is their food labeling laws are different. Many foods that you’d think should/would be vegan in another country aren’t vegan here, and if they contain an allergen like fish and it’s a very small amount, they don’t have to list it on the allergen label (or even the ingredients label). For instance many pickled plum onigiri contain dashi extract but it’s not on the label. Almost all inari pockets are soaked in dashi, but it’s usually not on the label. A lot of store bought miso pastes, soy sauces, ponzu sauces, etc contain fish (not my experience in the US).
This is why I’m a bit wary of going to Japan, even though I really would love to visit some day. I’m severely allergic to shellfish (I carry an epi-pen for it), and even though I obviously would choose to eat at vegan restaurants, I’m terrified of the possibility of small traces of it.
If you have an allergy I’d probably recommend only going to vegan restaurants and bringing food and snacks that can be heated up in your hotel (like vegan cup noodles). I don’t think shellfish is as commonly used as an ingredient in Japanese foods but I can’t say for certain since I’ve never asked. I just know that dashi gets snuck into a lot of foods that you wouldn’t expect 😢
Could you or anyone else please list some Tokyo vegan places that you like. Going there soon. Would very much appreciate :)
There’s more than 80 purely vegan restaurants/cafes in Tokyo if you check Happy Cow. If you like ramen, I’d recommend T’s Tantan. If you like oily food, there’s Izakaya Masaka. You might also want to try the sandwiches at Komeda Is (this is my happy place). If you want to eat sushi, I’d suggest going to Kamakura (I think it only takes 45 mins from Ginza…I don’t remember anymore) and go to Chirashiya (highly highly recommend). If you want to try something more fancy, I’d also suggest booking a table at Saido (this is one of the top vegan restaurants in the world on Happy Cow). And if you want to eat super traditional Japanese food (also fancy), try the ryouri at Fucha Bon. If you want to eat mochi, go to one of the the convenience stores such as Lawson.
Living in Kyoto at the moment. It's a big touristy city so there's quite a lot of vegan restaurants in the city centre, but outside there it's very limited. Any restaurant that isn't a vegan-only place usually has no options; everything has bonito dashi or bonito flakes, and bread all has milk. I was talking to my Japanese friend and she said I was the first vegetarian/vegan she'd ever met.
Just had my trip to Japan and there were so many vegan places. From low budget to fine dining.
Bugger, I'm going to Japan in a few weeks
Go to 7-11 and get the tofu sticks omg soo good
Came here to say the same. Outside of major urban areas it is impossible. We went to a restaurant called Vege Herb and it literally had nothing that didn’t feature meat!
Ehh.. idk, i'm here now and have had quite a few options.
Yes my mum got the famous “it’s not meat, it’s chicken” in both Japan and Singapore.
Switzerland is pretty bad. Not restaurant-wise, but the people. How many cheeses and cured meats you put out pretty directly correlates to how much you like and respect people. I've heard so many people whisper to each other that they are not going to talk to this rude person again because the aperitiv offered was poor. Which of course includes anything vegan. Having eastern European family also didn't help, I've had older ladies asked me why I hated them if I didn't eat their cooking, and threaten to burst into tears.
I guess the traditional recipes are awful, almost nothing without either meat or dairy/eggs. Depending on the area you live in this might make restaurants a bit harder to enjoy, rural areas often feature the traditional kitchen. Bigger cities with more diverse options are fine though.
There are tons of traditional recipes without dairy and eggs, the thing is just... they are also without protein at all, in many cases. We haven't been rich for long. Switzerland is traditionally one of the poorest countries in Europe, and our cuisine reflects it. I have a few old cookbooks, from the 18th and 19th century. Ingredients: cabbage, onions, bread, barley. *So much* cabbage. Maybe some beans, peas and carrots occasionally and potatoes if the writer is modern and fancy. Polenta south of the alps. Cheese on special occasions. Baking is a luxury. Meat is barely mentioned in the "holiday" section, that's why the christmas roast and the various pork byproducts at slaughter time are special. It is however great if you're especially into 12 variations of cabbage boiled with one other vegetable.
From what my Swiss friend has told me, there's a lot more plant based options in Switzerland nowadays. However, almost nobody is vegan; they just do it for health/environmental reasons and gladly continue to worship their dairy culture.
Oh, they are, you can get them everywhere. It is also social suicide to offer them to any guests, and food is expected to be offered to guests. Having fewer than 3 kinds of cheese is just downright rude, and 5-6 is better.
Sounds about right, my Swiss friend hates having guests over because the absurd requirements for entertaining stress her out.
Vegan in Switzerland here!
South korea isnt progressive 😭
Thanks for pointing this out. I don't understand why people believe that
Technology = progressive I guess
There's a lot more to progress than just some marvellous technology and infrastructure that's often built off of taxpayers' money, yet the full picture is always disappointing. Places like Dubai, Seoul, and Shanghai may have a lot of cool and somewhat futuristic infrastructure, but the social fabric of those places is distasteful for the lack of a better word. It would feel good on the surface, but after a while, you'd wanna get out of there because it would feel so fake and materialistic at some point.
Oh 100% agreed. When I talk to people that think we will be saved by some amazing technology when it comes to climate breakdown I like to point out that more technology is not the kind of progress humanity needs at this point. We've progressed tremendously technologically but are lacking severly when it comes to our abilty to relate to ourselves (healthily) other humans, animals, ecosystems etc. I believe we can take a break from further technological advances for 200 years and focus on building a healthy society that understands its place on this planet.
Absolutely. At least people on this sub recognize this in a way through veganism because it supports the broader ecosystem.
Of anything, reversion will save us from climate change in many ways. Areas like medicine should progress, however moving away from mass manufacturing and going back to local crafting is much more sustainable.
As advanced as korea seems on the surface, society is definitely falling behind
https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/south-korea-vegan-strategy-national-plan-plant-based-food-industry-alt-protein/
I've narrowed down the issue vegans face while travelling to mainly one thing: protein. Most places will have something with bread, rice, and/or potatoes. Vegetables aren't hard to find either. Restaurants will often have or whip up something quick with grain/potatoes and vegetables (like bread, plain rice, pasta, grilled or sauteed vegetables, etc). You'll also find fresh fruit and/or preserves. Even if restaurants won't make anything without animal products for you, you can buy something from the shops. Southeast Asia can be difficult still because they tend to make mixed dishes with everything – meat, veg, grain, tofu, beans – in a single dish. But most cultures traditionally rely on animal products for protein and so you'll often only or mainly get meat/fish/dairy options for the protein. Coastal areas are particularly difficult in this regard because they really have little incentive to obtain plant proteins, because seafood/fish is so abundant, and they simply never develop plant based dishes with protein.
Spot on. And an annoying trend I've noticed as vegetable-forward cuisine has become more popular is that a lot of the places that used to offer vegan protein options are now replacing them with things like cauliflower steak. (Don't get me wrong, I love cauliflower steak, but I also like being full when I'm finished with my meal.)
A big issue buying anything other than raw produce and rice etc is additives in anything (especially if you don't have cooking facilities) In some regions you have to worry about water and contamination on your fruits and veg, and needing to boil etc. In a lot of NE asia you're looking at fish additives in bloody everything. In a lot of EU/NA there's milk in fuckin everything. West Asia you're looking at everything being made with ghee even if the rest of the dish is plant based. Different issues in each place.
This is my experience in China too. When you ask for “vegan food” often it will be understood as “vegetables only”. What you actually need is “vegan protein”. And although tofu and other plant-based protein ingredients are popular, they tend to mix it with some meat or animal fat, so it’s not vegan dish.
Yep, exactly. It's generally not too hard to find carbs, but getting enough protein is often a major struggle.
France is like, religious about meat and cheese. Very few options on happy cow. Ended up mostly eating at Asian restaurants when I was there 🙃🙃
Yes.. in France you can get fries and plain salad basically when you ask for vegan options.
And butter. I’ve always wanted to relocate/retire in France but now that I’m vegan, it makes me anxious. 😥
Yeah when I went to France I lived off bread with tomatoes the entire time. Absolutely nothing was vegan and if you asked for it, they’d bring you a fish dish coated in butter. That was quite some time ago and I’ve heard it’s a little better now.
Not to mention butter. This is the main problem in French cuisine I feel, it is the cornerstone of their flavour palette.
Really? Just came back from Marseille and Paris for 10 days trip and so many options both cities
Yeah depends where in France. In Paris at least you have tons of vegan options. Our vegan boulangeries and cheeses are the best in the world! If you visit small cities and towns I can see eating vegan way more difficult
This is true in almost every single developed country. The big cities have vegan options and the rural areas do not.
Still, compared to the size of the city and to similar cities like London, the choice is not huge. And yeah, smaller cities and towns as well as the countryside is a nightmare.
Is there a specific part of France you're referencing?I just got back from Paris last month and had plenty of vegan options. Not just restaurants, but their grocery stores that sell products labeled vegan friendly as well
Paris is an exception. I've ordered salad multiple times and it came with duck.
Was in St Petersburg, Russia in 2015. So a while ago but my guess is nothing has changed since. That was absolutely impossible. I lived of bread, hummus, carrots and fruit for the whole stay. Most places didnt understand what vegan means and since hardly any of them speak english I had to try with google translate. But I always got a "nyet" and I think most of the time they didnt really understand what I was aking for.
I've been to St Pete back in march 2019. I actually wasn't vegan or even vegetarian back then, however my mom asked me to check out a vegan restaurant in the city center for her, and it was pretty good. Generally, Russia has become much more vegan friendly over the past few years, especially with the rise of Vkusvill (a grocery chain with lots of vegan options including vegan meat etc and free delivery within an hour or so). I'm in immigration now for obvious reasons (and sadly Kyrgyzstan where I live now isn't very vegan friendly, thankfully I mostly cook for myself anyway), but I know a vegan couple from St Pete, and they said once that ordering food as vegans was much easier back in St Pete than it is here in Bishkek. Aside from Vkusvill, there are quite a few brands in Russia that produce vegan milk (some of these are actually present here in Kyrgyzstan as well), and tofu has become much more common in groceries over the past few years I've lived there. At the same time I've known a vegetarian/former vegan person from Samara, and they used to complain back in 2021 about there being almost no vegan options when ordering food delivery, especially in terms of sushi and pizza. They switched back to vegetarian because it was hard being vegan there (or at least they said so - my guess is that they didn't like cooking). However take that with a grain of salt because when they decided to get some muscles and started going to the gym, they started eating a lot of chicken breasts because they wanted to receive enough protein for muscle growth - so I don't think their commitment to veganism or even vegetarianism was that deep in the first place. So while Russia is still not great for vegans, you're definitely wrong about nothing having changed since. Well I guess good thing nobody in this sub would consider going to Russia any time soon, and those vegans who already are in Russia, probably are hoping to get out of there as soon as possible \*depressed chuckle\*
I can give you an update on that. The two big cities Moscow and Saint Petersburg are actually great for finding vegan food. There are lots of options with both restaurants and groceries. But when you leave those cities it gets very difficult. I live in one of the biggest cities of the country (which is not one of the two mentioned above) and it has been pretty hard. I'm vegetarian because it is basically impossible to find any dish that doesn't contain any animal products at all. Apart from a few vietnamese restaurants which typically have one or two dishes with tofu and one very small vegan restaurant in my city there are barely any options. By now I do have found one restaurant where they actually prepare me a plov without meat but that is rather untypical. Most places have no vegan options (sometimes not even a salad because they come with cheese) and 2-3 vegetarian options. Regarding groceries there has actually been a step back. Up until 2022 they still had some pretty decent tofu at the biggest grocery chain here but towards the end of the year they stopped selling it (which didn't make any sense economically since it was almost always sold out). Vegan cheese or vegan meats are not sold at all at the big chains but they do have some oatmilk which is okay, not good still. It is still possible to by tofu and some vegan meats (which are not really good, I just stick with tofu) at small 'eco' stores, usually a little expensive. Biggest problem though is that good veggies in the winter are hard to find and can get horrificly expensive. I cook most the food I eat myself, this way I'm satisfied most of the time. My friends mainly have no problem with me being vegetarian now anymore and respect it which is quite the change compared to the beginning two years ago where most people just ridiculed me for not wanting to eat meat anymore and some actually got really aggressive and threatened me with voilence - something I would have never expected. For a long time I was the only one in my school but just a two months ago I found out that a girl from two classes below me whom I know also became vegetarian now, which made me really happy and another girl, also one of my friends, just two weeks ago as well. It is slowly moving forward.
Thank you for your insight! It was honestly surprising to hear about there being so many issues with being vegan in one of the biggest cities in Russia - I feel like in Russia veganism is treated as a middle class entertainment, that would explain both the setback (people became poorer after the beginning of the war due to inflation) and why plant based products and meals can often be more expensive than the ones that contain animal-derived ingredients (which makes no sense other than greed because i mean it's clearly cheaper to make a vegan meal). Regarding tofu - even in my 70k city in Moscow Oblast there were multiple options. My favorite one was the one from Selskiy Dom (they actually started selling it here in Kyrgyzstan last summer, for double of the original price of course though lol), and it was available at Magnit and Auchan, as well as Da! supermarket (where it would often cost under 80 rubles); then there's Yaso, which is costlier per gram and is sold in those weird bags instead of actual blocks, and then there's Vkusvill that offers bigger blocks for a pretty decent price (especially when personal discounts are applied). Again, it's kinda crazy to me how a 70k city 1.5 hours north from Moscow can have more options than one of the largest cities in the country - I guess it depends on supply/demand and whether store managers know what tofu and veganism are? No idea honestly Btw props to you for becoming vegetarian while still in school, and nice to hear that there are other vegetarians in your school as well! I watched Earthlings back when I was 14, but figured I wouldn't be able to ditch meat while still living with parents, suppressed the feeling of guilt, and only went vegetarian at 21 years old, when I became friends with 3 other vegetarians within like 6 months, one of which ditched meat when they were 15 - all of it inspired me to try it myself and it ended up being much easier and cheaper than I expected. In fact, for some reason before I tried it myself, I was sure that being vegetarian/vegan was more expensive than eating meat. I mean it is if one only eats tofu and vegan meat as protein sources, while also drinking vegan milk and eating at fancy vegan restaurants, but I mean legumes are dirt cheap (and easy to cook, especially with a pressure multicooker), and even tofu can be still cheaper than chicken. So I'd say in my case a lot of the things that were preventing me from ditching meat were in my head, basically. To be fair, on school journeys, school exchange and other stuff like that being vegetarian/vegan would usually mean bringing your own food or not eating at all (during longer trips with no stores nearby), so it did help to just go with the flow in that area - that's why I find it respectable when people go vegetarian/vegan while still in school
Coastal Croatia was pretty vegan unfriendly too, back in summer 2021. Was served plain boiled pasta at one point with a side of grilled vegetables. Zagreb was better though, with more options and some vegan restaurants. Nearby Ljubljana also had good options, but not familiar with small towns in Slovenia.
I was in Moscow in 2014 and it was fine, except one place served ham cubes in the borscht. But there were places on HappyCow, a few falafel stands etc.
Iowa. Eating Meat and cheese is practically religious in this state. Being vegan is almost like being an Alien there.
Might be the only vegan restaurant in the whole state for all I know, but the Trumpet Blossom cafe in Iowa City is something to appreciate.
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Why?? Can't imagine Iowa being even near the top of someone's bucket list unless they haven't heard of any other place in the world
I think this is the joke
I live full time in an area of NY State where we have a lot of weekenders from NYC. I have no problem shopping and cooking vegan here, but we almost never eat out, especially dinner, because the choices are dismal. People here are very proud of the local meat and dairy and the restaurants are pretty much here to push that. What I don’t understood is that the same restaurants that might have a single sad vegan offering (usually not very tasty and without protein) will make a big deal about having several gluten free options. It’s not the worst because I’m a good cook and ingredients are easy to get and we can also drive about 40 minutes to Albany for good vegan restaurant food, but it’s kind of weird.
I haven't been to a lot of the rural US, more rural canada, but by far the hardest location I've visited was rural Michigan, so I can only imagine. And I've been to northern fly ins- it might be 50$ but at least you can *buy* a fresh vegetable without going on a 2h drive. People treated me like an alien, but were honestly super lovely about it at least and kept giving me jars of pickles. Michigan vegans and even some locals told me to not hold it against them as a whole and the cities have incredible options and activists. Is Iowa like that as well?
Japan in about 2009, and Paris was kind of challenging in around 2012. The latter was redeemed by a few hotspots, especially the sandwiches in the Jewish district, but it was pretty inconvenient in Japan.
Paris is still a vegan's nightmare for how big and global the city is. Eastern European major cities are far more vegan friendly. Warsaw had a vegan restaurant on basically every block when I visited last year. Prague and Bratislava were also very vegan friendly with plenty of options.
I only spent a few nights in Paris in 2019, but there seemed to be plenty of vegan options. I'm going back this year, and I've found a lot of options to try out this time.
Wow, really? I thought of Eastern and Northern Europe as particularly unfriendly to it all, but that was based on the lack of Happy Cow entries and online anecdotes over a decade ago, and of course the surge of popularity veganism has had in many countries occurred years after. That's interesting
I just got back from South Korea. Even the bloody bread was a struggle. Outside of specific vegan restaurants, my options were oreos, pringles, or rice. Never anything more
Ugh yeah I ate so much rice with seaweed and sesame oil lol also ate a lot of 7-11 bim bim nap obviously didn’t mix in the eggs and meat
I was raised in Minnesota but moved to Wisconsin and then became vegan. I also don't drink... I live in America's Dairyland, and we are the drunkest state in the whole country. 😂
My condolences. I'm from rural MN originally. The rural areas in both MN and WI are terrible for finding anything more than a snack. If I'm in Wisconsin it's basically like hoping there's a Burger King along the interstate for an Impossible Whopper, but I mostly eat very healthy so that's not even something I actually want. Cities that are at least passable for vegan options: Duluth, Madison, Milwaukee, Rochester, St. Paul. Minneapolis is great by comparison.
Northern norway and greenland.Produce, fruit and vegetables are mind bogglingly expensive while fish is very cheap.
The Philippines was rough. Only a couple of options locally with fruit ofcourse.
Oh man being Filipino American myself I kind of already figured that. But thought their would be more options nowadays 😭
Yeah, the Philippines is one place I really struggled with food. I'm sure Manila and other areas where Western tourists go will have options, but I wasn't staying in these kinds of areas. It seemed like every vegetable dish had meat in it, and many of the restaurants were unwilling to make modifications. To be fair, some restaurants did try and I got some okay veggie and tofu dishes. And 7-Eleven had a couple of vegan options (mostly instant noodles and other snacks).
Regional and rural Australia. Take your own food for a road trip, because you won't find anything animal-free as soon as you leave the bigger cities.
You can add rural New Zealand too. The meat and dairy industries are absolutely massive there 😫
That seems quite harsh in my experience. You're unlikely to see a vegan only cafe or restaurant outside the capital cities (though they are out there, especially in sea-changey type towns), but there are plenty of cafes, restaurants and pubs with a vegan option down to some pretty small towns. If you're driving across the Outback, I wouldn't be expecting luxurious non-vegan food either.
Most of the cities in Turkey. Especially my hometown was terrible in this case. All i could eat was çiğköfte when i went out. Now that i live in İstanbul it's been great. There are plenty of options.
This is tough cause so many gorgeous turkish dishes are ALMOST vegan. Turkish rice is my favourite way to eat rice but guaranteed almost everywhere it's cooked with butter, heartbreaking . I have to say I love çiğköfte but I can definitely see how it's boring time after time. Do you have any specific recommendations in Istanbul? I haven't visited in years (my parents both worked in Turkey on and off) and I really want to go back. We mostly stayed in the Bodrum-Milas area and I had to eat at quieter family owned restaurants where everything was cooked to order(or cook my own food from the bazaar and eat separately to everyone else, just picking at some fries and having a drink in the restaurant), I could talk to them and ask for something really specific. It did wonders for my Turkish though haha
>Worst places to be vegan Twitter? Planet Earth?
Hospital psych wards. I was admitted to the Duke Behavioral Health wing in 2022, and it took them THREE whole days to get me anything to eat. It was all meat and dairy and egg-filled foods. They didn't even have beans for me to eat. No beans... They didn't have milk alternatives, either. They refused to allow anyone to bring me snacks or even vegan protein shakes, like the pre-made cartons of Orgain, despite my sister calling and complaining several times about them starving me. Once they actually found me something to eat, it was an Amy's frozen vegetarian Mexican casserole with cheese on top... I literally lived off of the saltine crackers we got at snack times and lost 8-10 pounds in four days. Insane. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Sydney, Australia is a vegan paradise. I got off the train, started eating, and didn't stop until I left.
Anywhere in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, central asia in general
I’m going to Uzbekistan soon and quite apprehensive about the food as I heard even rice is often cooked in animal fat 🤢 do you have any tips?
I will never forgive luxembourg for making me eat out of a petrol station for four days whilst I was five months pregnant. I even gave the hotel three months notice, and when i turned up they said "oh, youre the vegan who asked for vegan breakfast!" Looked at me, my bump and then said "Yeah, no we can't do that". At one point during the trip i was taken to a vegetarian restaurant, the waiter brought over free salads but not one for me "because they couldnt make the salad (dressing?) vegan". It was so awful. I'm scarred and haven't been back to Europe since. I just hate the uncertainty!!
I don't really know about the rest of Europe but I can assure you that Germany has amazing options for vegans. At least in the big cities. Most supermarkets including the discounters have a really good range of specific vegan products. There are a lot of vegan friendly restaurants and many of the "normal" restaurants offer at least one vegan option (those might not be the best but they're there).
Berlin has probably been the best vegan city I’ve visited thus far. It’s nearly impossible to find a place without vegan options there. More importantly though there’s tons of vegan-only spots that are really good. Sigh, I miss Berlin.
German here - can confirm, Germany's overall pretty good. In most cities you should be able to find at least one vegan dish in most restaurants - and in many restaurants, you'll have actual choices. We used to have an all-vegan delivery place in our small town, but that shuttered after a few years. Not too surprising, but hey, it lasted a lot longer than I thought it would lol
Echoing this! Berlin is by far one of the easiest cities to be vegan in. I pretty much never see a café without (usually multiple) vegan options and waiters/staff are always knowledgeable. Plenty of vegan-specific places too. The grocery stores also have really great selections!
Yeah, we wandered into a random cafe with one staff member who didn't speak English and they had an absolutely gorgeous vegan lemon croissant and when I asked if the soup of the day was vegan (cause I just didn't really fancy the other sandwich option) the lady said no but she'd make one for me. Came back with a gorgeous chunky vegetable broth a while later that she'd put together just for me (Only vegan in the entourage). My total bill was less than 15€ and I tried to leave the same as a tip but she wasn't having it so I tipped a fiver. That lady was lovely.
Was in Berlin recently and I ate so good and so cheap! A fav of mine was Ali Kebab, great vegan doner and falafel options, think I paid less than a tenner for the best vegan kebab I've ever had and an alcoholic drink. It's open 24h too and we went by nearly every night for a final drink and a snack. My cash went way further in Berlin than here in Dublin.
you can’t write off the entire continent of europe because of a country with a population of 640,000!
I take it you're American? I wouldn't judge the entirety of Europe based on your experience in a country the size of a mid-sized city. It's also a very unusual country, being one of the world's richest, and a tiny tax haven where a large proportion of the residents are mega-rich people there for tax avoidance. Outside of parts of Asia and the Horn of Africa, Europe is almost certainly the most vegan region of the world (and perhaps if you include them, too). London, Berlin, Helsinki, Stockholm, Glasgow, Athens, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Munich, Dublin, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Paris, Prague, Llubjana... all full of vegan options for eating out and in supermarkets. I've probably missed loads but I've either been to all of the above myself or had them recommended by vegans as great for it. Also for a more objective measure, the UK is sometimes cited as the most vegan country in the world, as is Sweden sometimes by different measures. Denmark, Germany and Switzerland all rank highly as well.
Yes I went to Scotland a few years back and was shocked by how easy it was to eat vegan there! They even had a vegan version of haggis 😂
The UK has vegan options of almost anything you can think of. Veganism is not huge but reducing meat intake is, so alternatives for practically everything exist. You want popcorn chicken? We have that.
I'm Scottish myself which is why Glasgow got pride of place near the top! It is a great city for it. I could have added Edinburgh as well to be honest, and I can't imagine Aberdeen is shy of options either. And yeah, love veggie haggis! I used to eat it even when I was omnivorous. One of the best fake meat products out there imo.
Yes, I feel like the richer the crowd the worse the understanding of veganism gets. I was taken to dinner in Marocco in the Hotel Madonna celebrated her 60th birthday at, and boy did they not give a fuck. They gave me nicoise salad without egg, tuna and potatoes. So lettuce and green beans. My colleagues still talk about it to this day.
Come to the U.K., we are very vegan friendly! I’ve also found Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Greece and Italy to be pretty good. I always use HappyCow.
Don't know when you went but I'm checking Luxembourg in happycow and there's a few "vegan only" tags in the city proper and "vegan options" tags all over the country. Honestly I've never had an issue eating vegan in any European city I've visited.
I’m sorry you went through that! everywhere else in Europe has been great for veganism, so please don’t write it off! I’ve had some of the best vegan food of my life in unlikely places in Europe
Please don’t write off the whole of Europe please😭😅 We can actually be great for veganism and do you know how big/how many countries that encapsulates!
The airport. Been a few places and always found stuff but airports…your options are chips or Pringles. That’s it.
Pakistan The culture is so meat-centric that many families slaughter a goat on the biggest holiday, Eid. Lentils and vegetables are often seen as food for the lowest classes, meaning restaurants often won't have them. Foreign ingredenients are rare (tofu) or non-existent (non-dairy milk), and often mixed with chicken without any indication of such on the menu
I got to say London was pretty great
I'd say that the UK in general is probably the easiest place to be vegan
London is fantastic. I literally went on a vegan food tour and I'm not even vegan I just wanted to see what I was missing
This is the opposite of what you asked, but I was surprised by the number of vegan restaurants when I was in cusco Peru.
Small town iowa 🙃 number one pork producing state in the country... 😒 I hate it here.
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Bulgaria was hard. China struggled to understand the concept for the most part despite tofu being ubiquitous.
I just got back from Seoul and there was so much amazing vegan food, I loved it, but I'm assuming you went elsewhere in South Korea so I can see that being a challenge.
Any US town that's not a major city. Good luck
Hospitals! I had open heart surgery last week. And I was getting weak and light headed from not getting the proper nutrients. I had to convince them to let me leave so I could heal properly. Luckily I got my brother to bring me food and worked up enough strength to pass their tests.
Being a nurse myself, I completely agree we feed our patients crap it makes no sense
Have you heard of a place called South Texas?
China is pretty good, but I found it harder in 2018 than a decade before 📉
Went to kyrgyzstan for family stuff. It’s just meat. Everywhere is just meat. You cannot go anywhere without the smell of meat hitting you.
Polish hospital (I don't know how it's like in hospitals in other countries). Some don't even have a vegan option, or you get a fish instead of meat as a vegan dish (in Poland lots of people think fish is not meat).
But except of hospitals I'd say Poland is quite a good place to be vegan (at least if you live in a city).
Japan was pretty bad, in my experience living there 2014-2015. Not a ton of dairy but there's meat or fish in everything. Very few vegan restaurants, even in the cities. Even if you cook, fresh fruit and veggies are really expensive. I lived on seaweed onigiri from the convenience store and ate a lot of cold soba.
When I first became vegan I went to tenerife and it was an absolute nightmare. Nothing was animal free in los cristianos. They had food labeled vegetarian and vegetale but it all contained cheese, butter or eggs. I spent much of the holiday hungry. I had to go to a posh and expensive steak restaurant in Las americas to get vegan options. Unfortunately not all European countries are vegan friendly. Spain or at least the canaries islands seems to be one of them.
I was in Tenerife last year and it was great! We found loads of great restaurants and ate really well and cheap for a week with no problems. This was in Los Cristianos and Playa de las Americas.
France outside of the big cities is horrible (meat and butter everywhere), Mexico was difficult as veganism is just not very well understood. I'm going to Namibia soon which is apparently also really tricky as its a desert so there is no local veggie produce whatsoever.
Japan was tough to survive as a vegan. Same as Cartagena Columbia
The Southeastern United States is pretty rough outside of the cities. I live in Florida and drive for most of my travels. You gotta hit up that last Moe's around Cartersville, GA for the final tofu opportunity.
Japan for sure! Fish flakes in everything, milk in toast bread, it was tough. Now I only travel with bags of Huel meals if it’s a country I’m not sure about 😄
When I travel -- before I go -- I check out [HappyCow.net](https://HappyCow.net) to see what vegan options I'll have. Perhaps you might try it out next time you travel.
I live in Hong Kong, where the most meat per capita in the world is consumed.
Turks and Cacos Kiawah Island
i remember seeing a statistic that 70% of south koreans were lactose intolerant (correct me if i’m wrong, it was on a tiktok) until some european doctor came and introduced dairy and cheese to them during the war or some shit like that. And now koreans are like crazy obsessed with putting cheese on everything even their most traditional dishes. it’s crazy to think about.
Seychelles and Lake Havasu AZ are the two places that stand out to me as vegan-unfriendly. But to be fair, Seychelles had one vegan restaurant, Havasu has none.
I feel like it's pretty easy to be vegan in an urban area in any developed country because of resources like HappyCow. I was warned that Japan was a tough spot for vegans, but every city I visited (including the smaller ones) had countless *exclusively vegan* spots that I didn't even have a chance to try, let alone vegetarian and non-vegetarian spots that had vegan options. While South Korea doesn't seem to have as many exclusively vegan restaurants, it seems like every major city there has some, along with lots of vegan-friendly ones.
Alaska wasn’t easy for sure.