Suitable for vegetarians and vegans

Some people might think I'm crazy to feel like this, but I swear: being a vegan or vegetarian person in Brazil is not that easy and sometimes we get stocked when we see that things can be easy and do work around the world. I will explain better. Since we moved to Dublin, I feel like living in heaven. Everything here is easier when we talk about vegetarian/vegan food (and lifestyle). There are a lot of reasons but I will talk about just one today.

Most of the products we buy here are from UK (yes, the vegan paradise) and EVERYTHING we buy has “suitable for vegetarians” or “suitable for vegetarians and vegans” written on the packaging. Even an orange juice. This is so amazing to me! If you think this is stupid, let me show you how it is in Brazil: you have to read ALL INGREDIENTS of everything you buy and sometimes you are not sure if something is 100% vegetarian or not. Sometimes you have to come back home with a doubt and call the costumer service or write an email to know what exactly is used in the product. Sounds bad? Can be worse. When you go to a place, like a restaurant, you have to ask about everything to know if you can eat anything. And people lie to you. We started to tell everybody that we have allergy to convince them that we don't want meat or cheese or eggs in our food.

So, to me, it's really a big deal to see all informations (besides the “suitable...” sentence all products have an “allergy advice” too) written in all products I want to buy and see menus with vegetarian options in most of the places we go to eat. It is a step ahead from my Brazilian reality.

I really hope that one day in the (near) future we can see this kind of thing everywhere.