You’re vegan so that means you can’t eat chocolate. Right?
It's funny how ideas are formed.
What I've experienced has gone something like the 'conversation' shown below. Now, this wasn't a conversation with me. It was the 'other' person thinking out loud to themselves, whilst I kind of stood there!
You're vegan. That means you don't eat dairy, doesn't it? That means you can't eat chocolate. Oh! I couldn't go without chocolate.
I would not be a happy bunny if this was true but it isn't, so I love hearing this ! Well...I enjoy replying and dispelling this myth!
There's a huge number of chocolates which don’t have any animal products in them, so vegans are not deprived of chocolate at all.
I went through a bit of a learning curve in the beginning! At first, I only bought products that had the vegan symbol on it. If it wasn't on the bar, box or bag of chocolates, I didn't buy it. I felt disheartened and began to think that I would never taste a variety of chocolates, ever again.
The silver lining was that I realised that there's a huge number of chocolates that are vegan but they’re NOT marketed as a vegan products. There’s no symbol or statement saying that it's suitable for vegans BUT it is! It’s like a secret, waiting to be discovered. :)
You can imagine my excitement when I realised! I started reading the ingredients of all chocolates that were unknown to me and I was pleasantly surprised by the number and variety of vegan chocolates that I could now enjoy!
Another bonus is that there are many European chocolates available in stores like Lidl, which are inexpensive, they come in all sizes, there’s loads of variety and they're vegan! They’re hidden but waiting to be discovered!
Believe it or not, there’s a gorgeous chocolate with a raspberry filling available in Poundland. It's called Ruffle Raspberry.
So the downside for some, but in my mind it’s an upside; is that going vegan means there’s a whole load of chocolates that I can’t and won’t eat. The upside is:-
- they’re often not as healthy as vegan chocolate
- dark chocolate has a higher percentage of cocoa in it, which has natural anti-oxidants.
- dark chocolate has a smaller karmic footprint, due to the lack of suffering which animals endure to make dairy chocolate.
See what I mean about the silver lining?
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"In the beginning, He created chocolate, and he saw that it was good. Then he separated the light from the dark. The dark was better."
Anonymous