Vegan Super Products, How Do You Know If They Are Healthy?

We are going to talk about some products that are sold today in almost any supermarket and that seem very attractive to vegans.

Common vegan products in the supermarket

Some of these products are certainly interesting, and it is enough that we know how to choose well among so many offers, and others are not recommended in any case. Don’t get lost!

Packaged gazpacho

Due to the very composition of the recipe, it is a product that is always vegan (or it should be). For a few years, the consumption of bottled gazpacho has become popular, usually in tetra brick, although there are also in glass bottles. It is evident, from the number of brands that offer it, that it is a product that has been very well accepted and that it is widely consumed.

In principle, it is a shredded vegetable, which seems difficult to be called insane. However, its nutritional quality can be highly variable from one brand to another, mainly for two reasons: the type of fat used and the amount of salt.

We should choose gazpachos whose only added fat is extra virgin olive oil, and not just plain olive oil. For this, it is enough to review the list of ingredients to be sure.

In addition, it should not contain anything other than the typical vegetables in the recipe, the mentioned EVOO, vinegar and salt.

Precisely this last ingredient is another of the main drawbacks, since these gazpachos usually contain very high amounts of salt. In this article we already learned how to distinguish a product with too much salt from an acceptable one:

Keep these points in mind if you are consumers of packaged gazpachos, and you will make sure you make a good choice. Although of course, it will always be preferable to do it at home.

Hummus

Packaged hummus is another of those products that did not exist a short time ago and today they make several brands and are sold in any supermarket, even with varieties of different flavors. And it is also a recipe that is vegan per se.

In this case, as in gazpacho , controlling the type of fat and the amount of salt is essential. There are many hummus that are more than 25% (more than a quarter of the product!) Refined sunflower oil. That is not a good choice, nor should it be consumed on a regular basis.

The truth is that in the case of hummus it is much more difficult to find it made exclusively with extra virgin olive oil, not even only with olive oil. Most of the time it contains sunflower, rapeseed or rapeseed oil or even palm oil. So in this case, having only olive, even if it is refined, is the least bad option.

Likewise, it is important that it does not contain starches or an excess of additives. Ideally, the ingredient list should only contain chickpeas, olive oil, tahini or sesame, lemon, and salt. Or at most some other spice such as paprika, or if it is a hummus of some flavor, the necessary ingredient (peppers, olives …)

Again I encourage you to do it at home, it is a very simple recipe, and you ensure its quality.

Sausages and vegetable burgers

For some time now, traditional brands of meat products have begun to develop lines of vegan “sausages”, and they are already on sale in several supermarket chains.

They are not usually healthy products, we already delved into it in this article in which you can read the reasons, as well as what to look for to choose well:

A necessary note is to point out that some of these products, although they do not contain meat, do contain eggs or some derivative thereof, so they could be considered vegetarian, but not vegan.

Vegan pastries and ice cream

This is a booming product sector, especially vegan ice cream. Every summer there are more brands that produce vegan references from this sweet, including private labels, or that expand the offer compared to the previous season.

In this case, on a nutritional level, the indications are the same as for any ice cream or any bun: they are products to avoid or reduce as much as possible due to their high sugar content and often also poor quality fat and refined flours in the case of The pastry.

It’s easy to make healthy vegan ice creams from frozen fruit at home. I encourage you to try a recipe this summer!

I want to finish by clarifying that I have focused on products that today are sold in many conventional supermarkets. However, this does not mean that if we buy the same type of product in a specialized or organic store, the nutritional quality will necessarily be better.

We should apply the same thoroughness when reading the labeling, since the vast majority of products in these stores are very similar to those in a conventional supermarket, only more expensive due to their mode of production.

Remember that the fact that a product is made with organic ingredients is no guarantee that it is healthy from a nutritional point of view. Organic sugar (be it whole wheat, molasses, syrup …), organic refined flour, or organic refined fats, are still products to avoid.