Hey y'all, just in the posting mood today! I was writing another post and thought about my love for good vegan alternatives. I am not personally vegan, but as someone who takes great pride and pleasure as a cook serving other people food, I want to serve my vegan comrades as best as I can, so I try to taste test a lot of vegan stuff. I'm not a carnist who believes that the vegan option can never taste as good, I just have a lot of allergies so I have to be cautious about eating things that aren't meat. However I've tasted and heard from vegans, certain things like cheese simply aren't as good as the non-vegan counter part. I feel like we hear about this stuff way too much though, as there are so many interesting flavors vegans use that carnists don't.
My personal pick for this topic is coconut aminos. Soy sauce is a great way to add umami flavor into almost anything you're making, so I was disheartened at first when I heard that soy sauce wasn't vegan. But one of my vegan friends got me a bottle of coconut aminos to try, and it blew my mind. The extra sweetness in it makes so many things you'd use soy sauce for way better. Teriyaki sauce should always be made with coconut aminos, fried rice gets a slight sweetness that really lends well to the veggies in it, it's so fucking good.
If you want to be perfect about things like that, then you really, really gotta check the ingredients and not take anyone's word for it. There is no other choice but to learn about all those kinds of things. Gotta go online and read up on less obvious sources of nonveganity. Scrutinize every single item you pick up. Check each brand and each variety/flavor with a given brand. And even if you read the label before you have to re read it now n again in case they change something.
At least now you have a phone you can bring shopping with you to look up anything even slightly questionable. Or take a picture for later research.
It's stuff like this that's the reason why the Vegan Society has the "as far as is practicable and possible" clause in it, especially since sugar and a few other "ambiguous" things are such ubiquitous ingredients. For bone char in sugar specifically, I hear it's a pretty exclusively American issue but even many businesses based in the United States are apparently no longer using sugar that has been refined with bone char. If I buy sugar as a standalone ingredient, I definitely always get organic sugar, though, as that's an instance where you can be a lot more selective and accurate.