AIBU to be annoyed by vegan ice cream?

[hoffa]

I love ice cream. A nice creamy strawberry ice cream, or maybe a raspberry ripple, or just plain vanilla. I'm happy to pay extra for good quality ice cream.

But one thing that has irked me in recent years is the prevalence of vegan ice cream being sold just as "ice cream". This is especially true at the theatre, where little tubs are sold during the interval and no where does it say the ice cream is vegan. Its too late when you've forked over £5 for a little tub of strawberry ice cream just to find out it's vegan and tastes nothing like a proper strawberry ice cream from the same brand.

For what it's worth, I'm vegetarian and eat a lot of vegan foods. For things like sorbet obviously it's no problem, but why ice cream?

Just ask? You don't have to buy it.

Yanbu

Vegan ice cream often has coconut in - i am allergic!

Its like the vegans purposefully want me dead for my judging their food

DD is lactose intolerant so I'm always grateful if they have vegan ice cream but I do agree that it needs to be labelled as such. A lot of vegan stuff is absolutely disgusting and tastes as if it has been pre-digested (vegan cheese...) so if something traditionally has been made with cows milk people should be informed if that's not the case.

As someone who has spent most of DD's childhood looking for vegan ice cream while out and about, I am surprised by your experience. Usually ther's no more than one vegan option, usually vanilla, almost always m ade with coconutt milk and therefore disgusting.

I agree that it shoud be clearly marked. I am very surprised that the bulk of what you find is vegan vs regular.

I’m lactose intolerant and so vegan ice cream is the closest I can get unless I want unfortunate consequences.

i agree it should be clear what is dairy and what isn’t

Just ask before you buy it🤷🏻‍♀️

Happened to me on the weekend. Asked for the ice cream flavours and they included chocolate. Paid £5.95 for a small tub of chocolate that turned out to be vegan and not nice at all. Threw it away after one scoop. So annoyed!

With the big London theatres at least, usually one or two of the flavours are vegan, with the rest dairy. So you just need to ask before you order if it bothers you. I'm so glad that dairy free ice cream has become mainstream, makes my allergic DC so happy to be "normal".

Really they’re not labelling it at the theatre? I just find that incredible, when vegan ice cream is usually more expensive and therefore they like to shout about it on the packaging. Also those of us who are dairy free (CMPA) aren’t going to buy some random ice cream unless it’s clear that it’s DF. What a weird way to market their food. 🤔

YANBU I’ve took a vegan tub by accident. I picked a lovely pot of rum and raisin ice-cream from a shop on holiday and couldn’t wait to eat it. Opened it up and it tasted horrible, very artificial. I looked at the tub and it was only a bloody vegan one with a long list of ingredients and chemicals.

I think it’s more that it’s labelled but it’s not obvious. Our local theatre has vegan ice cream which looks practically the same as non vegan version. You get it from a box yourself so the assumption is that you’ve taken the one you wanted. You are in a hurry, the lights are not perfect (it’s in the corner ) so ….
Ask me how I know.
added : the price is £5 per tub for any ice cream or sorbet

As a vegan I have never ever found vegan ice cream being sold as the only/regular ice cream.

At £5 I'd want gold flakes in it. I know it's part of the experience to eat in cinema or theatre but as a vegan I always ask. It's no big deal.

I hate it OP. They sell it as "ice cream". Anything called ice CREAM should be made mostly from cream. It's prevalent in my area, I've gone into shops with an "ice cream" sign outside only to find 100% fake ice cream.

However, this is across the whole food industry. Some foods shouldn't be called "chocolate" or "chicken" either. Anyone saying it's "not a big deal" is helping the food industry sell us poison instead of food and getting massive profits from it. Of course, it's all masked as "ethical". If you are vegan, it's healthier just to avoid completely.

I bought a big whippy ice cream at the cricket. I thought it would be vanilla but it was vile and inedible because they had used coconut milk to cater for vegans. I had a lick and almost vommitted. It tasted of coconut and I don't like coconut. It was advertised as vanilla whippy ice cream.

My DS is allergic to multiple things including dairy and egg so we're always glad to see vegan ice cream but I agree it should be very clear at the point of sale what it is made of. DS is also allergic to nuts and quite a lot of vegan ice cream is made from nut "milk". A surprising number of servers don't seem to know what is in the vegan food they are selling. Obviously it is ok in a supermarket where you can read the ingredients before you buy, but I always ask otherwise and not infrequently get blank looks or a reply along the lines of "It's vegan...no animal products". Yes, I already know what isn't in vegan food, I want to know what is. There does often seem to be an belief that everyone can eat vegan food so it doesn't need to be advertised as what it actually is eg soy ice cream, almond milk ice cream, which is really annoying, as not only doesn't everyone want to eat those things, there are plenty who can't!

Agreed, and many store-bought plant-based desserts rely heavily on added sugars and gums because the vegan products are not shelf stable or more prone to forming ice crystals.

Ice cream is often full of crap too.

I don’t buy it much any more

Most ice cream in this country should not be labelled as such as it doesn't contain cream but a whole lost of chemical sounding ingredients. I do like a vegan Magnum though and Aldis Madagascan vanilla has just a few normal
ingredients and is yummy.

Surely it says on the pot?

If it makes you feel any better you could think about how the baby cows are taken away from their mothers at a very young age so we can have dairy ice cream.

Isn’t vegan ice cream quite a lot higher calorie too? A restaurant we go to regularly now lists calories and the vegan option is over double the other one. People might want to know that.

YANBU. It should be made clear what you are buying, apart from anything the vegans want to know if they can eat it. And given that things like coconut and soy are more likely to appear, you should be able to see what's what. I thought you couldn't call it ice cream below a certain level of dairy, but a quick Google shows me vegan Magnums being sold as ice cream, so I guess you can.

I'm seeing more and more things like vegan 'chicken' not being labelled clearly too. I want to know what I'm eating.

Can you not ask or look at the tub before you buy it?
Its highly unusual for vegan ice cream to be the only option
As for not being ‘allowed’ to be called ice cream, that’s a weird concept as cream isn’t exclusive to dairy eg coconut cream etc
Akso the vast majority of shop bought ice cream does not contain any dairy cream either

I always ask now after accidentally having it once at the theatre. DH came back with two pots of it and was horrified when he tasted it. He didn't read the pot but did assume when he asked for chocolate ice cream that that's what he was getting.

At a very busy warm performance once when i got to the top of the queue, they said "all we have left is vanilla and vegan". I looked at their supplies, 2 pots of vanilla and about 20 pots of vegan chocolate. I nipped off to a different queue where I was lucky enough to bag a chocolate mint.

It's fine in supermarkets, etc. I read the labels.