The Oops List of Unintentional Vegan Foods

Here at the Plant Powered Playhouse we aim to bring you independent educational articles that we have sourced, a dedicated resource to help you and your children understand that plant-based foods are delicious, nutritious, and accessible. Presumably most of us are aware of basic plant-based foods readily available; such as, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, grains & pseudo-grains; however there is a list of foods or should we say edible food-like products, that were not intentionally created plant-based or free from animal products but surprisingly are.

Before looking down the list, we would like to bring to your attention that these foods are by no means a replacement for the traditional plant foods; in fact, we would advise that these foods are eaten sparingly, and some cases avoided completely; to be consumed only as a treat or perhaps a last resort if nutritional plant-based foods are limited or not available.

To reiterate, the foods listed below are processed or highly processed, with highly processed sugars, modified ingredients, artificial ingredients, giving rise to questionable nutritional values.

From our own experiences and an insightful website called Environmental Working Group, a nutritional rating was created; considering 3 factors, Nutrition, Ingredient Concerns, and Processing Concerns. A detailed explanation of the 3 factors are found below;

Nutrition: a nutritional value is created from the following; number of kilocalories, saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, sugar, sodium, protein, fiber, and fruit, vegetable and nut content.

Ingredient Concerns: identify potential concerns for our personal, public and environmental health; along with, the presence of contaminants, pesticides, hormone levels, antibiotic levels and what if any food additives are present.

Processing: scores based upon, to what level ingredients have been modified and the number of artificial ingredients.

The rating runs from one to ten, one being the most nutritional to ten being the worst from a nutritional standpoint.