Ishtar Darlington
The next step in going vegan is dropping the dairy products from you diet. This is normally where people start to panic. Often, we can’t imagine life without cheese in our sandwiches or milk in our tea and, at this point, we give up. Ditching dairy doesn’t have to be dreadful though. In fact, like with removing meat from the diet, it can be a fun way to try new flavours and products.
Lets start with milk (take a look here for an interesting quiz on the stuff). Depending on where in the world you’re from, this may be a very integral part of your diet. Here in Ireland, milky tea is a staple in any household while milky coffee is fundamental to many people’s mornings in Europe, the Americas and worldwide. Thankfully, with so many milk-like substitutes on the market you won’t have to forego your daily fix. Many supermarkets now stock soy, almond and coconut based milk substitutes while you can find fancier ones made from hemp, hazelnuts and rice in more specialised shops. Aldi now even sells soy and almond milk very cheaply in many of their stores.
Another major qualm of those transitioning to veganism is the thought of chucking the cheese from their meals. Now it doesn’t take an expert to figure out that those blocks of soft and solid fat are not beneficial to the human diet. Nevertheless, their addictive qualities can make the very idea of giving them up terrifying! If you feel like you’re not quite ready to say goodbye to cheese just yet then, again, there are plenty of vegan versions on the market. You can buy prepackaged dairy-free cheese in most health food shops and a lot of regular supermarkets now too and, if you feel like experimenting in the kitchen, there are plenty of recipes out there for vegan cheese and cheese sauces using nuts and tofu as a base.
One thing to keep an eye out for is milk as an ingredient in some of the products you wouldn’t expect to find it. A quick scan of the packaging will identify any dairy ingredients (all allergens will be written in bold or in CAPS to make them easily recognisable). Foods this may apply to are some chocolate, biscuits, crisps and cereals. But all is not lost – there are plenty of ‘accidentally vegan’ treats out there such as Oreos, Chilli Heatwave Doritos, Fox’s Party Rings and most bourbon biscuits to name but a few. When it comes to chocolate, the darker the chocolate, the less likely it is to contain milk and, if a high cacao count isn’t your thing, there is plenty of vegan ‘milk chocolate’ available on the market (my favourite being the deliciously creamy Vego Bar).
