10 November 2021
I wanted to start this blog to share my thoughts and learnings since I transitioned to veganism on 1 January 2019. For those of you who are already vegan or transitioning to veganism, you would know that it is not as easy as you might think.
I would say Hong Kong is not yet very vegan friendly. There are definitely more and more vegan options and vegan / vegetarian restaurants. However, if you just walk into any random restaurant (even a western one) thinking, “There has to be some vegan options”, you may find yourself disappointed and ending up with an empty stomach. Also, although the intention was to be vegan since 2019, I have accidentally consumed non-vegan products on a couple occasions, largely due to people’s understanding of what “vegan” means. Most of the time, it’s easy for people to understand “Mou Dan Mou Lai” (meaning no egg no milk) — however, they would exclude butter or cheese from this category and include them in a dish they serve calling it “vegan”.
On other occasions, some people seem to think “dark chocolate” is naturally vegan. A couple months ago my company organized an event for us to bake at a studio. I was delighted to see from their menu that they have lots of vegan options, such as vegan donut pops and vegan tiramisu. The vegan donut pops were super easy to make and tasty, so we decided to book another session there ourselves so our daughter can join as well. Everything went well until the final stage, when we needed to melt some dark and white chocolate and add some toppings for decoration according to the written instructions. Out of caution I asked the staff whether the dark chocolate and white chocolate as well as the different types of toppings were all vegan. She wasn’t sure and after a couple minutes of checking, advised that none was. When I questioned why this was advertised on their website as being “vegan”, she said only the cake part was vegan but not the toppings. This was certainly disappointing ☹ (plus thinking that we consumed all 12 pops happily last time).
Therefore, I haven’t been able to go 100% vegan due to these situations. However, I don’t feel guilty, since the intention was good — and that’s what matters the most! I call myself “progressive” as I am still new to the vegan world, and I would like to share my learnings and mistakes so that whoever is reading can also benefit and avoid making the same mistakes.
一個循序漸進的全素食者的旅程
2021年11月10日
我想通過這個博客分享我從2019年1月1日開始成為全素主義者以來的想法和教訓。對於那些已經成為全素主義者或正在考慮成為全素主義者的人來說，你應該知道這並不像你想像的那麼容易。
我想說的是，香港還不是非常全素主義友好。現在有越來越多的全素選擇和全素/素食餐廳。然而，如果你走進任何一家餐廳(甚至是西餐廳)，想著“一定會有一些全素的選擇”，你可能會失望，最後空腹而歸。此外，儘管我的初衷是成為全素主義者，但自2019年以來，我偶爾會在一些場合食用非全素食產品，多數是由於其他人對“全素”有不同的理解 — — 大多數時候，人們對“無蛋無奶”的理解很容易，但他們有時會將黃油或乳酪排除在外，並將其納入他們提供的菜肴中，稱之為“全素”。
在其他場合，有些人似乎認為“黑巧克力”是天然的全素。幾個月前，我的公司為員工組織了一個烘焙活動。我很高興地看到他們的功能表上有很多全素烘焙的選擇，比如“全素甜甜圈”和“全素提拉米蘇”。全素甜甜圈非常容易做，也非常美味，所以我們決定自己再去一次，這樣我們的女兒也可以加入。一切都很順利，直到最後階段，根據書面說明，我們需要融化一些黑巧克力和白巧克力，並加一些裝飾在上面。出於謹慎，我問員工，黑巧克力、白巧克力以及各種各樣的裝飾是否都是全素食。她說不確定，需要查一下。過了幾分鐘，她說不是。當我質疑為什麼在他們的網站上宣傳這是“全素”時，她辯解說只有蛋糕部分是全素，而不是其他部分。這當然對解決我們的質疑沒有任何幫助（而我們上次愉快地吃掉了所有12個甜甜圈）。
因此，由於上述原因，我尚未100%全素。然而，我不會感到內疚，因為意圖是好的 — — 這是最重要的。我稱自己是“循序漸進的”，因為我在全素世界還是個新手，我想分享我所學到的和所犯的錯誤，以便任何正在閱讀本文的人都能從中受益，避免犯同樣的錯誤。
