Sunday 17 June 2007

Do you buy from only vegan companies or support others who try?

There is a moral dilemma involved with buying vegan products.
Do you buy products from companies that only make vegan things to support their great effort and make sure that none of your money gets indirectly fed back into non-vegan items, or do you buy vegan products from companies that supply a whole range of things, to encourage them to keep making the vegan item and possibly bring out more.

For example I am always in a dilemma about buying Grapenuts. They are made by Kraft foods who also make a lot of coffee. Now some of these coffee brands have had horrible animal experiments done on them (I can't remember if it was Kenco or Nescafe). They also produce a whole range of other products like cheese and angel delight that contain non-vegan ingredients.
Should I encourgage them to continue making vegan products by buying the Grapenuts or should I boycott the company to make a stand against their other products.

If I do stop buying products from companies like these what about supermarkets who carry a whole range of items few of which are vegan. There are no purely vegan food shops in this area, I could buy from greengrocers and health food shops but at a much higher financial cost.

What is your opinion on this?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, Michelle

Please support health food stores.

That way you are not lining the pockets of the large supermarkets, who sell meat products. Who will only accept certain shapes of vegetables.

With a higher demand, the prices in the health food store should come down.

Michelle said...

I wish I had a good local health food shop. Unfortunately all I have nearby is Holland and Barrett.
In Cheltenham there was a great wholefood supermarket http://www.naturalgrocery.co.uk/ but unfortunately they are too expensive for me to use all the time. There are some nice independent health food stores in Shropshire but the nearest is 10 miles away from me. If you have any suggestions on how I can still support them on a limited budget I would welcome them.

Anonymous said...

You have got a very good website.

Have a look @ the newsletter page of the wild carrot @ buxton in derbyshire.

www.wildcarrot@freeserve.co.uk

Michelle said...

The wild carrot website is very good. If you want to check it out go to www.wildcarrot.freeserve.co.uk