Supermarkets have slashed expensive vegan sandwich ranges from their offerings, a survey has found.
Many major supermarkets have reduced or dropped their plant-based sandwiches, while others are charging more for climate-friendly fillings.
Tesco’s vegan sandwich range has shrunk by 28 per cent since 2019, while Morrisons and Asda have entirely removed their plant-based sandwich options.
Vegan sandwiches tend to be more expensive, a survey of 420 sandwiches from 14 retailers and food service outlets by the Eating Better sustainable food alliance found. On average, plant-based options were the most expensive sandwich type, Eating Better said.
How come? Really, something I don’t understand here….
Simon Billing, the executive director of Eating Better, said: “Three years on from our last sandwich survey, and with yet more evidence from climate scientists on the need to reduce our meat consumption, it’s deeply disappointing that the sandwich aisle is still too meaty and that plant-based is too pricey.
And that I certainly don’t understand. Prices are information matey. You might not like the info, but it is there and you’ve got to pay attention to it…..
Quelle surprise!
Easy to explain. The vegans have all died from malnutrition.
Why would I bother with that vegan shite while I’m still permitted to buy the real thing?
“yet more evidence from climate scientists on the need to reduce our meat consumption”
Really? Simply saying something you claim these mysterious people called “Climate Scientists” have said isn’t actually evidence of anything. Show us the working out.
Go to Tescos. Look at their Reducrd for Quick Sale cabinet. It’s all this plant based crap ( and it is crap ) . I have to keep paying full price for my dinner now !
I’ve tried some of these, in the interests of science. The best of them are actually fairly good, but more expensive than meat. The rest are awful.
I had to throw away some tasteless vegetarian sausages that had the texture and colour of Polyfilla. These people are promoting food waste! – round up the mob.
I bet the market for these things is actually pretty small, and will get smaller when people try them.
Surely mustard and cress with margarine is vegan and one if the cheapest sandwiches ?
No Gunker !
Colmans mustard has a picture of a bull on the packets.
Therefore all mustard is meat adjacent !
As an aside. A colleague who was a high caste Brahmin and thus a very strict vegetarian told me that crisps were on the approved list, because the flavourings were all just salt. Except, he said, for cheese and onion crisps. In order to maintain the cheesy flavour the salt is laced with rennet, which is a banned food.
Ottokring:
That’s like the time way back in the ’70s when I asked the lady serving the soup whether the vegetable soup had any meat in. “Sorry, I don’t know”, she replied, “But the oxtail soup almost certainly doesn’t”.
Otto, I remember the row over hedgehog flavour crisps. ‘Flavoured’ implies there is actually hedgehog in it, so some twat with far too much time on his hands took the manufacturers to court and they had to change it to hedgehog ‘flavour’.
Are there any pikeys (or Bear Grylls types, SAS, you know) on here who can confirm the crisps actually tasted like hedgehog?
What Ottokring says! The ‘buy it now or we chuck it’ shelves in every supermarket I visit are always, without fail, groaning under the weight of vegan crap.
It’s about time they stopped wasting so much shelf space on it. It’s clearly not selling in the quantities they envisaged..
Maybe the supermarkets will move on to locust kebabs now.
@JuliaM
A couple of weeks ago “Guido” (order-order.com) published the results of a survey done by YouGov on “Public estimates v Reality”… For Vegan/Vegetarian the perception was 20%, the actuality was 4% – so I’d guess that genuine vegans are well below 1% of the population. Obviously the stock controllers at the supermarkets are basing their levels on perception only. 🙂
In the Aldi I frequent the meat shelves are often denuded of various things, but the vegan alternative shelves are always full…………..
What’s all this “plant-based” bollocks? We’ve already got as perfectly cromulent word – *vegetarian*.
I do believe that the supermarkets overestimated the number of people who want to buy meat free stuff. They also took on board, without criticism or research, the views of the whining and cajoling Ecoloons and the Greta worshippers.
The supermarkets must be now realising that for all the bluster and screaming of the Ecoloons the market for vegan stuff is pretty small.
However to give an alternative view I find the increased availability of stuff like veggie burgers quite handy. This is because for religious reasons I can’t mix meat and milk and therefore can’t have cheesburgers. Being able to get a reasonable veggie burger that I can slap a slab of brie onto and therefore get an approximation of something that I normally would not be able to eat is much appreciated.
The problem for the supermarkets is such people like me are few and far between. There are not enough people who believe that cheesburgers are wrong to justify the disproportionate amount of shelf space in shops for veggie and vegan stuff.
I’m all for supermarkets having a wide variety of choices but as a previous commenter, Baron Jackfield said, the supermarkets seem to have made the decision to push vegan and veggie stuff on the basis of perception rather than what people actually want to buy.
I certainly agree with Julia that the vegan stuff, especially the more expensive and heavily promoted vegan stuff more often than not ends up on the ‘end of date’ shelves. That should tell us a bit more of the truth about the market for this stuff than we get from the various vegan food promotion grifters that too often end up on our media and advising the govt.
What’s all this “plant-based” bollocks?
Branding. The more honest ‘chemical sludge’ didn’t test well.
The simple truth is that “plant-based meats” are so shit that even vegans don’t want them. This gunk, once ‘perfected’ costs tuppence to make, hence it is pushed by food manufacturers.
The other thing pushed by food manufacturers is bullshit about the environmental impact of meat. I bet the Eating Better sustainable food alliance is a bullshit group funded by purveyors of chemical sludge.
The Telegraph has published a couple of articles which report that the green lobby’s claims about meat (which get pushed 24/7 by groups funded by the sludge makers) are largely bollocks. The claims about the water required to produce beef apply only to intensively-reared, corn-fed cattle and the repeated claims about animal farts and methane are hot air.
Baron Jackfield – do you have a link for that order-order article? Thanks.
@MC..
Re: animal flatulence…
ISTR reading some while ago that it had been calculated that the methane emitted from the world’s termite colonies far exceeds that produced by our bovine and ovine friends.
Vegetaraianism and Veganism is often an age thing. My neighbour has just graduated from arts college and she said that most of her colleagues were vegans. I know a chap of my age who is a vegan, but he was brought up as one.
Otherwise it is religious or ( this is a crucial point ) it is a class issue. I think that we will find that most veggies/vegans are public sector/arts based middle class people. They usually won’t shop in Aldi or Lidl or Tescos. That is where the supermarkets have made their mistake – I think that they hoped to attract the student/ young professional market with this gloop and it has failed.
@PaulF
Can’t find it, but a quick google finds the thing that was being commented upon (IIRC)…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10885319/British-public-overestimates-minority-groups-like-trans-gay-people-vegans-YouGov-poll-shows.html
I know it’s the “Fail” but even it is capable of copying the numbers (one hopes)..
I suppose that I should have a rummage through the YouGov site to check 🙂
The folks that want Vegan produce are quite often those people who don’t want to shop, and not be seen to be shopping in the leading supermarkets.
Most meat substitutes are made from fungi, so technically not plant based either.
I can literally see next month’s roast dinners walking about mooing, oinking and bleating in the fields around my house. I’d rather eat that than something extruded from a nozzle in a factory somewhere…
One could always take the Alan Clark (pbuh) approach. He was vegetarian except for stuff that he had shot himself.
Well I think they’re jumping the gun currently but the WEF and UN are pretty explicit on this. I would expect a Meat ban to come in within the next two decades as part of their ongoing agenda. So you won’t have any choice in the matter. Murphy is also a good barometer here. He suggests people should be banned from eating meat.
I’ve noticed that I seem to be adding more meat to my Rubbish Bin Stew recipe. Evidently there’s at least one person who likes to sink his fangs into the flesh.
A meat ban V-P. I feel long pig is the best solution to that nonsense. It’s obvious there are plenty of candidates.
Ottokring. I agree with you that it is an age thing the desire to be seen to be ‘different’ whilst following their college age herd. There’s also the shock realisation for some young kids that meat comes from animals which is not surprising as these days a lot of meat products don’t really look that much like meat which leads to the disconnect. My seven year old is quite happy to eat chicken sausages from the butcher but draws the line at eating the chickens from the garden.
You make a very interesting point about class in your comment. It could well be the case that the middle and upper class vegans who shop at rip off whole foods type shops would never be seen dead in Tesco or Aldi or Asda and these supermarkets attempt to cash in on this market has failed.
Is grass a plant? If it is, then shirley, as cows eat grass, beef is technically plant based? Likewise sheep, goats, chickens, etc.
Talking of the eco-use of land Vince Dale of Ecotricity is spinning a yarn about green energy from grass. He claims it would not affect agriculture (so long as meat consumption falls 10% !!). But it strikes me as nuts: any grass used in any sort of green energy power station would have to be harvested. Of necessity, to protect the harvester, the grass would have to be grown on agricultural land, wouldn’t it?
So a ‘vegan’ sandwich is ‘climate friendly’ is it?
Does it come in the same plastic box as a BLT? Does it sit on the same cooler shelf in the well lit supermarket? Do the ingredients come from far and wide in the same refrigerated diesel truck? (Or does the vegan one have exotic veggie ingredients that are flown in on refrigerated 747s?)
In short, even taking on board their absurd premise that pig farts might damage the climate, the vegan sarnie is no more climate friendly that a BLT and a BLT has the added advantage of containing bacon.
I usually have meat at breakfast but this morning the fridge was bare. So, houmous and toast it was. Then some rasps from the garden. All v delish. Meat tomorrow, though, I hope.
“ I think that we will find that most veggies/vegans are public sector/arts based middle class people.”
And puritan/authoritarian as well.
I wouldn’t care about them if they stuck to their own world, but like every other puritan/authoritarian group they’ve reached for the climate change cudgel to force their miserable lifestyles onto the rest of us.
I’m really hoping that the silver lining of the current energy and food crises is that people start turning round and (metaphorically) thumping them and their cheerleaders in the Beeb.
who can confirm the crisps actually tasted like hedgehog
If it tastes like chicken, it’s hedgehog…
Veggies/Vegans should be liable to excess sewage charges. 30-50% of what they eat, they are incapable of digesting and is, therefore, evacuated as unused shit.
BiND,
I’m really hoping that the silver lining of the current energy and food crises is that people start turning round and (metaphorically) thumping them and their cheerleaders in the Beeb.
Me too. The trick to boiling the frog is to do it sloooowly. Start having crises and people will panic and vote for odd chaps with moustaches.
Stuff metaphorically… A proper thumping is the only thing going to get listened to… Else beeb and fellow travelers just feel they need to do more to “educate” us proles
Thank you F221,
Also it is worth bearing in mind that it is a lifestyle choice and there may be consequences : vitamin deficiencies, gut problems, thin blood and so on that must be mitigated. The older chap that I know who is a vegan is very fit and works out and stuff, but he has been doing it his entire life and knows how to “get it right.”
Those, like you, who have religious requirements have had generations ( often going back to the year dot ) to adapt to their diets. Tarquin and Jocasta haven’t and wonder why they feel tired all the time.
I was so proud when my 8 year old son responded to a question from a vegetarian who asked him if he knew what venison was, he promptly replied ‘Bambi’s mother’ then insisted we order it for him
Ottokring said:
“Those, like you, who have religious requirements have had generations ( often going back to the year dot ) to adapt to their diets. Tarquin and Jocasta haven’t and wonder why they feel tired all the time.”
I’ve met so many new or relatively recent vegans who just look unhealthy and ill because they have not taken either the time or the effort to make sure that their diet contains all the necessary nutrients. Whilst it’s quite possible, if a bit more difficult for vegans than for meat eaters and veggie or pescitarians, to get easily digestible protein, unless you are ingesting the sorts of micronutrients that are necessary for the body then you are going to be losing out. I have moved in circles where there are a few of the ‘Tarquins’ and the vegan ones really don’t look all that fit or healthy.
The Jains I’ve encountered are either lacto-veggie or full on vegan but then they’ve had since the 7th century BC to sort out their dietary stuff and have knowledge tht the Tarquins etc don’t have.
Otto,
“One could always take the Alan Clark (pbuh) approach. He was vegetarian except for stuff that he had shot himself.”
Nice idea, but note sure I would like the taste or texture of leftie vegans.
Pre-packaged vegan and vegetarian food is more expensive because it’s eaten by middle class people who like fancy food. So it has expensive-looking branding and packaging, and is full of exotic ingredients that do for the most part actually make it taste quite nice.
A bog standard Tesco cheese and ham sandwich is cheap because it’s marketed at non-fancy people.
You can buy fancy sandwiches with meat in too. You probably can’t buy Tesco Value vegan sandwiches, because who would buy them?
It doesn’t matter anyway because real vegans grow their own veg and cook everything from scratch over a grass-burning stove as nature intended.
Rob
Are vegans allowed to burn dung, I wonder ?
Before or after they’ve cooked it?
Vegan sandwiches tend to be more expensive Ok, at least this not universally true, so if cost was the issue (yeah I know meat is subsidised more than beans because the handouts have been by land area) then we’d expect the less expensive vegan stuff to still be popular.
Clearly it’s a taste and satisfaction problem.
Or vegans tend to make their own bait.
Fair play to the retailers for trying to crack a new market, but it didn’t work, price wasn’t the issue, let’s move on.
“Are there any pikeys (or Bear Grylls types, SAS, you know) on here who can confirm the crisps actually tasted like hedgehog?”
Not Bear Grylls/SAS, but having had a spat of being homeless and poor enough to try….
Gods please no!
There’s a solid reason they’re traditionally not on our menu.. Not even extended stewing can make something of them. And even then the taste is….unique… “I’d rather starve/there must be a better option around” territory.
Rat ( and, like pigeons, not the diseased stressed-out city-sewer dwellers..) is actually a pretty good ingredient. So are guinea pigs ( the forgotten invasive species..).
Musk rat ( something, something, dikes, traps, knowing where they are..) is very scrumptuous.
Swan is generally a no-no. Not just because the buggers are pretty hard to catch and…relatively dangerous.. Unless you are with a group, there’s no way you can reliably use/preserve all of the meat. And you tend to learn to absolutely hate wasting stuff when you’re that poor.. Especially when male ducks are in heavy oversupply here, and culling the excess with your stomach actually helps Mother Nature.
And yes.. I know the crisp flavour is referring to the hedghog mushroom.. 😛
There was a report a few weeks ago that Food Banks complaining they were overhelmed with supermarket BB date Vegan & Vegaterian food eg Quorn
The complaint: We can’t give it away, nobody wants it
The reason for surplus: due to inflation the virtue signallers can’t afford to virtue signal
Expensive because highly processed, many expensive additives, complex to develop & make taste good, small market – ~4% are Vegan/Vegetarian
btw: Anyone noticed many frozen veg now have Vegan label slapped on them. Are vegans so stupid they don’t know fruit & veg is Vegan
I don’t know about Muskrat, but the rather similar-looking Coypu can be found on menus in Southern France (as Ragondin), where it’s a pest – in sufficient numbers they can undermine canal banks.
Beaver is also tasty
Beaver is also tasty
For those who like that sort of thing.
“odd chaps with moustaches”? Nowadays these are Village People. Might be less of a threat . . .
In WW1, the Germans tried to stave off hunger by killing all the pigs so that there is more food to go round because they thought that Veganism saves food.
https://de-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Schweinemord?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp (translated into English) and the original in German: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweinemord
(who needs a crystal ball to foretell the future when we have history books?)
@Silke
Thanks