10 vegan dishes from around the world that everyone should try at least once

From msn.com/en-ca

By Colman Andrews

About 88 million people worldwide practice a vegan diet, according to the World Animal Foundation, 13 million of whom live in the United States.

People abstain from meat and all other animal-derived products for various reasons, including religion, animal welfare, health, or the environment.

Showcasing a variety of plant-based fare, VNutrition explored global culinary traditions to outline 10 popular vegan dishes from around the world.

Traditional cuisines of countries such as Indonesia, Ethiopia, Israel, and India—where at least 1 in 10 people (11%) are vegan—include vast repertoires of plant-based dishes that highlight flavours and textures of locally available fruit and vegetables enhanced with spices and other nonanimal ingredients.

Even in places less known for meat-free fare, there are plenty of options: Mexico serves up guacamole and nopales (cactus paddle) tacos, mochi and soba or udon noodles are deliciously common in Japan, and Italy offers a range of pasta- and plant-based cuisine. Elsewhere, soy-based foods like tofu and tempeh have long substituted meat and cheese: Chinese Buddhists developed a range of savoury "mock meats" in the 10th century.

For those who've yet to experience the limitless palates of a vegan diet, it might be noted that Eleven Madison Park in Manhattan—one of only four restaurants in New York City to boast a coveted three Michelin stars—has served a plant-based menu exclusively since 2021.

Falafel

Falafel is a croquette made with ground chickpeas mixed with minced garlic, parsley, scallions, and spices, then formed into balls or patties before being deep-fried. It's eaten, usually as a sandwich in pita bread, throughout the Middle East and beyond. 

The Egyptians call it ta'miyya and make it with fava beans instead of chickpeas. 

Misir wot

Ethiopia's cuisine is wonderfully rich with vegetable specialties.

Misir wot—"wot" means "stew"—is a hearty dish of red lentils and long-cooked onions. Complex flavours come from berbere, a wonderfully all-purpose spice mix of a dozen or more ingredients, including cayenne, ginger, turmeric, and cinnamon.

Like most Ethiopian food, misir wot is traditionally eaten without utensils and with the help of a piece of crêpelike bread called injera.

Trinidadian doubles

Doubles are a quintessential street food in Trinidad and Tobago. The dish, usually eaten for breakfast or after a night on the town, was invented in the 1930s by two married plantation workers who—like as much as 40% of the islands' population today—were of Indian origin.

The recipe calls for two rounds of fried flatbread, called bara, topped with curried chickpeas and finished with green mango pickles and a sauce made from Scotch bonnet peppers or tart tamarind. The simple ingredients provide a powerful evocation of home for emigrés from those islands living elsewhere.

Spaghetti aglio e olio

Pasta sauces can be complex and often involve some form of meat or seafood. Not so for spaghetti aglio e olio, an elegantly simple dish requiring just three key staples of the Italian kitchen: pasta, garlic, and olive oil. The meal can be dressed up with a pinch of chili flakes.

Believed to hail from Naples, spaghetti aglio e olio is a prime example of cucina povera, or poor cuisine—a term referring to its lack of luxury ingredients, certainly not its paucity of flavour.

Cig kofte

Çiğ köfte, or "raw meatball," is a specialty of southeastern Türkiye. The dish was originally a kind of steak tartare made with raw lamb or beef mixed with bulgur wheat, spices (including the ground chile called urfa biber), and other ingredients, pomegranate molasses drizzled over top. So what's it doing on a list of vegan meals?

Turkish health officials banned that kind of çiğ köfte in 2008 for food safety reasons. Without missing a beat, sellers swiftly developed a meatless version wrapped in a piece of tortilla like flatbread, with nuts sometimes substituted for meat. Today, it is sold in that form all over the country.

Channa masala

Channa (or chana) is the Hindi word for chickpea, and masalas are blends of dried spices vital to Indian cuisine. Channa masala, then, is a kind of chickpea curry, originally concocted in Northern India.

The dish is built on a base of caramelized onions and includes tomatoes and a healthy measure of garlic. Kulcha, naan, or some other Indian bread is considered an essential accompaniment—though for a vegan diet, make sure the bread is made without the traditional yogurt.

Lotek

Indonesians love their vegetable salads, made with raw or cooked ingredients (sometimes both) and almost always flavoured with peanut sauce.

West Java's take, lotek, is a prime example of the Indonesian province's Sundanese cuisine, which combines sweet and sour flavours with spice and salt. Lotek is made solely with steamed or lightly boiled vegetables including spinach, cabbage, and bean sprouts. Ingredients are tossed in a bright peanut sauce flavoured with kencur (galangal, a ginger relative) and often served alongside tofu, tempeh, or rice.

Gazpacho

Among Spain's most famous dishes, gazpacho is a cold soup of puréed tomatoes, sweet pepper, cucumber, garlic, and onion, seasoned with olive oil and vinegar.

In the region of Andalusia, gazpacho's birthplace, the soup is often drunk slightly chilled from a glass; however, it can also be served in a bowl, garnished with finely chopped bits of the vegetables that go into it. Traditional recipes include bread, though this may easily be omitted for those who are gluten-free or gluten-averse.

Vegetable japchae

One of Korea's best-loved dishes, japchae is a savoury mix of sautéed vegetables such as spinach, mushrooms, and carrots tossed with glass noodles made from sweet potato starch.

Tradition has it that the dish was invented by a chef for King Gwanghaegun in the 17th century. Japchae can be served as a main course or side and is a popular staple for holidays, anniversaries, and other special occasions. The dish is often made with thin-sliced beef or pork—but the all-vegetable version is every bit as satisfying.

Gallo pinto

Gallo pinto means "spotted [or "painted"] rooster" in Spanish, but there's no poultry involved.

Considered the national dish of both Costa Rica and Nicaragua, it's a comfort-food classic of rice and beans (black beans in Costa Rica, red ones in Nicaragua) flavoured with peppers, cilantro, and various spices. The Costa Rican version takes on a special character thanks to the addition of Salsa Lizano, a condiment made with chiles or hot sauce and molasses. Gallo pinto is often eaten for breakfast, but it also finds a place at the table for any meal.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/nutrition/10-vegan-dishes-from-around-the-world-that-everyone-should-try-at-least-once/ss-AA1A8RLR

Veganism finds a foothold in the land of the kebab

From hyphenonline.com

In Istanbul, a surging vegan food scene offers everything from French patisserie to hipster burgers

The smell of barbecue smoke wafts through the cobbled streets of Fatih, Istanbul’s old town, an ever-present companion as we weave through storied bazaars and along boulevards lined with Ottoman-era wooden buildings, crumbling Byzantine brick houses and ancient obelisks. Dotted across the city’s many bridges, fishing lines extend down to the Bosphorus Strait, angling for bluefish and mackerel. On every street corner, beloved semi-feral cats gnaw at fish bones or dry kibble. 

Istanbul – once capital of the Holy Roman Empire and still a bridge between east and west – does not, at first glance, feel a particularly good place for vegan food. But with 26 exclusively vegan restaurants and 36 vegetarian restaurants, according to Happy Cow, veganism is definitely on the rise here. 

Off a bustling high street in Besiktas, crowds fill the tables of  Vegan Masa, a traditional wood-fired Turkish kitchen. Owner Funda Özdem opened her doors three years ago, though she is not new to the vegan hospitality scene. For the past decade she’s been hosting and catering vegan picnics on both sides of the strait, and has noticed growing demand for meat-free food. “Eight years ago, eight people came,” she says. “Last summer, 200. We realised [there weren’t] enough products to meet the demand.”

We order the mixed plate for two and purple basil iced tea. The drink is refreshing in the late summer heat, the herbal sweetness tempered by cinnamon, cloves and lemon. Özdem brings fresh condiments to the table: sliced tomatoes with lemon, parsley and sliced onion, and shredded lettuce. This is followed by a plate of pide filled with soya mince and cheese, and another with mushrooms; lahmacun, a thin, crisp pizza-like flatbread topped with soya sujuk (spiced sausage), peppers, onions, tomatoes and spices; and bulgur and soya mince kibbeh. All come straight from the wood-fired oven. 

Also popular is the cashew-based ayran, a yoghurt drink too salty for our palates. For dessert we share the kazandibi, a caramelised milk pudding served with almond ice-cream, and incir uyutmasi, a cold milk pudding naturally sweetened by native figs. 

Chefs Mustafa Potur and Lütfü Özdem, whose father was a baker, knead dough and load and unload the oven. On planning their menu, Potur says they wanted to recreate the experience of going to a traditional Turkish eatery. Eventually they landed on around 15 simple recipes. 

“It is so unnecessary using animals to make traditional foods,” says Funda Özdem, who became vegan because she likes animals. Most of Vegan Masa’s 14-person crew have now transitioned to veganism too. “Some of us are atheist, some Muslim, others Christian,” she says. “We’re a diverse team.”

Earlier that morning we’d taken a 20-minute taxi ride from our hotel in historic Sultanahmet to Kadıköy on the Asian side of the strait, an area equivalent to Hackney in east London, known for its vegan cafes and restaurants. We came to visit Ethique Plant-Based Patisserie, a beautifully furnished French pastry shop that feels like a greenhouse with its large windows, houseplants and sunny terrace. 

The counters displayed an array of vegan macarons, chocolate-dipped madeleines, stuffed croissants, brioches and sourdough. It was difficult to choose from the many offerings. “The Fuji is popular,” said manager Ebrar Elmas, pointing at a green, eclair-like pastry that balanced rich pistachio with raspberry and vanilla. “People also come for the artisanal sourdough bread, the gluten-free bread, the crunchy pistachio roll — that is my favourite.” 

We ate croissants filled with tofu and harissa paste and an incredible tarte-aux-roses of patisserie cream, lychee jelly, rose jam and fresh raspberries — Turkish delight meets summer in south-east Asia and breakfast by the Seine. In the coming days we returned several times to sit on the terrace, local cats curled up beside us. I tried the crunchy pistachio roll, a laminated pastry filled with custard, jam and pistachio paste, and decided that if I could eat it every week, I would. 

Ebrar told me that Engin and Aslı Sancaktaroglu, a married couple, opened Ethique two years ago with a mission to make food that is “good for your soul”. Head chef Aslı is Muslim and sees her faith and lifestyle as compatible. She learned to make pastries at the prestigious Cordon Bleu school in Paris, infusing her bakes with local flavours such as pistachio, rose and fig, but also drawing inspiration from her travels. The mango sticky rice pastry, inspired by the Thai pudding, was a stand-out. 

“A plant-based diet is better for nature, your health and for animals,” says Ebrar. “You save a lot of things by eating vegan.” 

Vegan Masa (left) and Falafel Köy (right). Photography for Hyphen by Michael Vince Kim

This tallies with what Tugce, a theologist and volunteer at the city’s famous Blue Mosque, tells me back in Fatih as we discuss human and animal relationships. Islam, she emphasises, fosters a respect towards nature: “[Animals] cannot speak up – we have to speak up for them.” 

The prophet Muhammad, she says, did not eat much meat in his lifetime and ruled that you cannot hurt animals when you slaughter them. The mosque takes great care to look after animals, feeding stray cats who wander into the complex, and employing a novel, humane way to repel insects so worshippers avoid unwittingly killing them. Placing the broken shells of ostrich eggs around the mosque thresholds, they say, keeps unwanted visitors away. 

Also in Kadıköy, we eat at Kumin Vegan Lezzetler, a restaurant specialising in simple but well-cooked Anatolian and Mediterranean dishes. The quiet private room and secret garden offer reprieve from the chaotic surrounding neighbourhood as we savour wholesome moussaka and gnocchi with fresh tomato sauce, both paired with sweet sharbat, a drink prepared from a herb or flower-based syrup – here basil – followed by apple pie with almond ice-cream. 

On another day we find ourselves extremely hungry on the Asian side of the water, and eat at Vatka, a hip vegan burger joint off a quiet street in the Moda neighbourhood. The Mexican black bean burger and thin-cut fries hit the spot, as do the minty falafel served with a drizzle of tahini and spicy sauerkraut. Afterwards, we take a stroll through the area, passing modern boutiques and coffee shops, and end up in a quiet park overlooking the Bosphorus Strait, drinking up the last beat of summer. 

Another place we return to frequently is Vegan Dükkan Lokanta in trendy Cihangir. Everywhere in Istanbul is full of cats, but Cihangir, in particular, seems to have become a home for them. Three join us as we dine. The Turkish ravioli, better known as manti, stuffed with green lentils and topped with tangy cashew yoghurt, tomato sauce and herbs, is by far our favourite savoury dish. 

Plates at Vegan Dükkan Lokanta, in Istanbul’s trendy Cihangir area. Photography for Hyphen by Michael Vince Kim

I cannot stomach the adana kebab – a veganised version of a local favourite that swaps seitan for the usual skewered lamb, served with rice, tzatziki and salad. Having never eaten meat, I find the taste too similar to how I imagine it might be, based on its smell. We eat our meals with lemonade, made with both the juice and oil of the lemons, and finish with the best tiramisu we have ever eaten. The restaurant is next door to Istanbul’s first vegan shop, which is well-stocked with biscuits, tahini, cashew yoghurt, tofu, ice-cream, nut butter and other staples. 

A 15-minute walk from the restaurant, we find Vegan Community Kitchen atop a hill, and down a flight of stairs. The atmosphere is comfortingly familiar and reminds me of 90s vegetarian restaurants in England: whole food-based, hearty and somewhat anarchic. Profits go towards feeding the street cats. The manti here are also delicious. We opt for ones stuffed with spinach, but they also come filled with sweet potato. They have run out of the brownie but offer us some local halva — my favourite sweet, made from sweetened and baked tahini. After eating we walk five minutes down the hill and find that classic Istanbul view of the 14th-century Galata Tower. 

In Istanbul’s non-vegan eateries, eating vegan is a little harder but not impossible these days. In 2008, one of the most popular local foods — çiğ köfte — became accidentally vegan when the health ministry banned the inclusion of raw meat. Bulgar and spices are hand-pounded into a smooth paste, shaped into “meatballs” and served with raw onion, parsley and spices. While some establishments boast they are vegan, others stay quiet. Many locals, it seems, are unaware that meat has been removed from the recipe. One waiter in a restaurant near our hotel tells us adamantly: “It’s impossible. Çiğ köfte is minced meat.” 

Naturally vegan falafel and hummus are also staples here, but less seasoned than in nearby Syria and Lebanon. A number of Syrian eateries have opened in Istanbul in the past 10 years as refugees fled their homeland. After perusing the antique and boutique shops in Balat, a historic centre for the Jewish community and a bohemian neighbourhood known for its colourful wooden houses, we sit for a late lunch at Falafel Koy. 

We order vegan banana cocoa milkshakes and two mixed plates, well-priced in a city of rapid inflation. While we wait, the owners show us pictures of their granddaughter who has just turned one. The space is still decorated for her first birthday with balloons and garlands. The plates come piping hot and generously portioned: crisp falafel, hummus, baba ganoush, fresh tabbouleh and fried pita. This is living, fresh and vibrant food, in stark contrast to the pide and dumplings we have mainly been eating, which were good but different. The owners, who left Syria 10 years ago, are a Muslim family and not vegan but are happy to say “our cuisine is vegan”. 

Istanbul, with its layers of history, has always been a city in a state of perpetual transformation – invading territories and being invaded, and taking in diaspora. It feels that a new, greener and more diverse chapter is in the making for this city at the confluence between continents, cultures and ideas.

https://hyphenonline.com/2024/10/14/multiculturalism-uk-britain-ethnic-diversity-debate-kieran-connell/ 

Why Istanbul Is a Must-Visit for Vegan Food Lovers

From vegnews.com

Ancient yet modern. European yet Asian. Tranquil yet bustling. Istanbul is a city full of fascinating dichotomies, and we explore one more: traditionally meat-heavy yet tantalizingly vegan

For thousands of years, Istanbul has been a crossroads between worlds, combining East and West in its own distinctive and uniquely self-assured culture. 

You can feel it strolling the Grand Bazaar, the largest covered market in the world and once the terminus of both the Silk Road across Asia and the Spice Route through the Indian Ocean. It’s a kaleidoscope of riches: piles of spices and herbs, handicrafts, clothing, and tempting sweets. 

Beyzanur K.

You can feel it floating in a ferry in the middle of the Bosphorus, the waterway running through this city of 15.5 million people, separating Europe from Asia. As the sun slips behind Byzantine-influenced domes and needle-like spires of the city’s magnificent mosques, they turn into silhouettes cut from the orange sky. Ancient streets come alive with lights and the call to prayer echoes from the shore.

And you can feel it in the city’s scrappy and committed vegan scene. Drawing ingredients and techniques from throughout the erstwhile Ottoman empire, much of Turkish cuisine is vegan or can be easily veganized. And today, with the advent of new techniques in faux meat and dairy, even the flesh-forward aspects of the cuisine (and there are many) are being reimagined by a bold vanguard of restaurateurs.

Meruyert Gonullu

Where to dine vegan in the land of spice and silk?

I was staying in Cihangir, an old neighbourhood not far from the city’s famed and scenic Golden Horn waterway, so on my first night there I wandered over to Vegan Istanbul, a well-lit, friendly place on two levels that features a case full of vegan versions of traditional Turkish dishes. I indulged in an unctuous, braised seitan served with sautéed greens and succulently soft zucchini and peppers stewed with tomatoes and onions, along with meaty balls of bulgur wheat in a zesty tomato sauce. It was all accompanied by a bulgur salad dotted with cooked carrots and alive with a sweet and tangy vinegar dressing.

Vegan Dükkan Lokanta

For a more elegant vegan experience, I visited Vegan Dükkan Lokanta, a cosy little restaurant off a side alley just a few blocks away from Vegan Istanbul. The restaurant is a new expansion of the small but well-loved shop next door: 18-year-old Vegan Dükkan, which prides itself on being “the first and only store in Turkey that sells completely vegan products.”

“We spent two months working on the recipes,” says owner Tartan Apari. “We decided to have a small menu focusing on special food created with high-quality ingredients.”

The results are delicious, carefully composed plates. I tried manti, triangular ravioli-like dumplings filled with ground soy mixed with fresh parsley. They were topped with vegan yogurt and braised seitan in a tomato-ey garlic sauce studded with chickpeas. The dish’s herbal, savoury, earthy flavours blended seamlessly with the tart, creamy yogurt, enhancing the tanginess of the sauce as the slippery pasta rolled languidly on the tongue.

Vegan Dükkan Lokanta

The plate of manti was paired with an elegant glass of red Sava wine, followed by a moist and rich carrot-buckwheat spice cake, redolent with nutmeg and cloves and drizzled with sweet cashew cream. The meal was satisfying and memorable—a taste of Turkish cuisine at its finest.

Dilek Yüksel

Animal welfare in Istanbul 

One of the oldest vegan restaurants in Istanbul, Vegan Community Kitchen, in the less-touristy Balat neighbourhood, grew out of the protests against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s anti-democratic power grab that rocked the city in 2013. “We served free vegan food for everyone at a community table,” says founder Oya Toriş, referring to the protest camp that grew in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, the political heart of the nation. 

“I was vegan but I didn’t know any other vegans,” she says. “I just fed the cats and dogs at home; I had to be vegan because how else could I be concerned for animals?” The table led to the birth of a network of politically active vegans, and grew into her restaurant.

Happy Cow

Vegan Community Kitchen is a tiny hole-in-the-wall (literally—it sits inside an old Byzantine brick arch) serving a tight menu of traditional dishes like Ersoy’s seitan-based döner on her fresh Turkish flatbread with rice-based yogurt and chili sauce. Everything is homemade: she makes the seitan from scratch in her house across the street, and the effort is evident in the flavour. It’s chewy and fresh, deeply satisfying fare.

A generous approach toward animals living on the streets is an Istanbul tradition going back centuries. Devoted animal lovers like Ersoy feed and care for them, which results in a city teeming with independent cats and dogs with a friendly attitude toward humans. 

Limonata

Still, it can get out of hand. In the garden at Limonita, a vegan spot in Kadiköy, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, cats jumped up on my table to try and eat my plate of spiced sausage and börek—flaky, fried pastry stuffed with peppers. The young, pink-haired server was kind enough to banish them with a smile, and I enjoyed lunch in the leafy garden, a brief respite from the happy bustle of Kadiköy on a weekend afternoon. 

Limonita

How inclusive is the vegan scene in Istanbul?

Filled with bars and restaurants, Kadiköy exudes a joie de vivre and a welcoming air. Limonita, as well as other spots in the neighbourhood, are self-declared LGBTQ+ safe spaces.

Veganarsist

It’s also where I found Veganarsist, a small spot filled with smiling Turkish couples. There, I enjoyed warm, savoury kofte stuffed with spiced soy and more manti. They were comforting and tender, drenched in tomato sauce and yogurt sprinkled with dried mint. The delicately al dente pasta was filled with spiced lentils, for a hearty and mouth-watering bite. 

It struck me as very similar to Vegan Food Cartel, back on the European side near the ever-thronging shopping boulevard of Istiklal Street. Its Iskenderun kebab—tender slices of vegan meat with mildly spicy tomato sauce on house-made flatbread—was a delightful umami experience. And their smoky shish kebab of nicely carbonized and toothsome vegan meat in a tangy and spicy chili sauce over tender rice was a real window into parts of Turkish cuisine that are less easily veganized.  

Meruyert Gonullu

Where to find vegan sweets in Istanbul?

Lokum, the soft, cornstarch-based sweet developed here in the 18th century and known to most English speakers as Turkish Delight, happens to be vegan. 

You’ll see it in gorgeous mounds and pyramids of many translucent colours in the Grand Bazaar. Ask for a taste; it’s tradition to try before buying. The best I had was at Haci Bekir, a sweet shop with several locations that claims to be descended from the inventor of lokum (reportedly the Sultan broke his tooth on a hard candy and demanded an alternative; one Haci Bekir recipe made the cut). Theirs is made with cornstarch and beet sugar and is cooked in huge vats before being poured out and sliced into soft, yielding cubes.

Oleksandr P

Try the traditional flavours like pistachio (the soft lokum concealing crunchy, roasted nuts), rose (which is sweet and only delicately floral), or mastic (the sap of a Greektree with a complex, almost piney flavour evoking the rugged Mediterranean coast).

I was also delighted to find veganized versions of other traditional sweets. Güllüoğlu, a vast sweet shop and café in Karaköy that specializes in baklava and its cousins, now has two different vegan baklavas on their menu: one with walnut, another with pistachio.

Güllüoğlu

A pastry made from layers of crisp, flaky phyllo sandwiching minced nuts and soaked in sharbat (a traditional sweet syrup), well-made baklava like the ones at Güllüoğlu transcend the individual ingredients. Aficionados eat them upside down, allowing the syrup to soak down into the nuts and flaky pastry for the sweetest bite.

I sat at a little outdoor table shaded from the late morning sun, sipping Turkish coffee and nibbling baklava. The horns of boats plying the Bosphorus, the street cats lounging by the entrance, the sweet and nutty baklava came together in the feeling of Istanbul’s essential eternity.

https://vegnews.com/vegan-travel/why-istanbul-is-a-must-visit-for-vegans

Turkey will no longer allow production and sale of vegan cheese

From totallyveganbuzz.com

Turkey’s vegan cheese ban is the latest instance of countries implementing restrictive plant-based food legislation.

The Turkish government has banned the production and sale of vegan cheese triggering outrage in the plant and animal advocate community.

The legislation has already outlawed the use of the term “cheese” to describe products that are dairy-free under the pretext that it could confuse consumers.

Now the country’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry states that “products that give the impression of cheese cannot be produced using vegetable oil or other food ingredients.”

Moreover, vacuum packaging, which according to the authorities, can be misinterpreted as traditional cheese, has also been prohibited.

The implementation of the ban means companies manufacturing plant-based (vegan) cheese are subject to inspections and liable to be fined. Plus, vegan cheese products have been taken off from the market, and consumers are no longer able to access these products.

Outcry

The decision has been strongly opposed by the plant-based community. The Vegan Association of Turkey (TVD) has even filed a lawsuit against the ministry in a bid to annul the ban.

According to the non-profit, “the fact that the necessary clarification has not been made even about the similarity criteria, which is the basis of the said ban, creates an open-ended area of pressure and action for the inspectors/punishers operating in this field.”

This is so because the amendment of the Article 9/3 added to the Turkish Food Codex Regulation indicates that any product that is “considered to resemble [dairy] cheese but does not even contain the word cheese in its name” can be prohibited unreservedly.

And there is no clarification on what the “similarity criteria” entails.  

In an ensuing petition to the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the group argued that the prohibitions encroach on consumers’ freedom of choice, especially those who do not consume and/or cannot consume dairy products of animal origin due to ethical, environmental and health reasons.

The group also pointed out that while the prohibitions in question are portrayed as measures taken to protect consumer rights and to prevent adulteration / deception, there are no suitable alternatives provided to solve the problem.

Moreover, highlighting the repercussion of the ban on plant-based producers, the group added: “In the face of this unprecedented ban, the plant-based cheese manufacturing companies that have already invested in this field of work, created production facilities and employment opportunities, stockpiled raw materials, and exported products are now being punished.

“The plant-based cheese manufacturers in Turkey can’t see ahead of this ban because no solution, no way out has been shown to them.

“This is in stark contrast to the goals and most important duties of the State, which is to improve the competitiveness of national companies in the international market, to facilitate the production, employment and exports, and to develop new technologies.”

Bans on plant-based products across the world

Turkey is just the latest country to implement prohibitive laws around the making and labelling of vegan and plant-based products.

Last month, France imposed censorship on terms like “sausage,” “steak,” “bacon,” and “chicken.”  The ruling will come into force in October 2022 and will be applicable to domestically-manufactured products. All imports will remain uncensored.

France’s ban came just days after South Africa’s Department of Agriculture, Land Reform, and Rural Development banned terms like “plant-based meatballs” and “chicken-style strips.”

While many countries are considering bans on alt-meat foods citing “consumer confusion”, research shows that consumers are not misled by meat terminologies on plant-based products.

A 2021 Cornell University study found that participants were not confused by meaty terms on plant-based foods. On the contrary, researchers argued that ‘omitting words that are traditionally associated with animal products from the names of plant-based products actually causes consumers to be significantly more confused about the taste and uses of these products’.

You can sign the petition here.

https://www.totallyveganbuzz.com/activism/turkey-will-no-longer-allow-production-sale-of-vegan-cheese/