What does being vegan involve?
Living as a vegan means avoiding the use of animals for food or any other purpose. There are lots of reasons that people may choose to follow a vegan diet, including respecting animals, reducing their impact on the environment and wanting to have a healthy and nutritious diet. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you find the products you need to follow a vegan diet then read on.
If you are making the change to this way of being, it’s useful to get into the habit of reading the labels on everything, from food to bodycare to household products. As well as helping you to choose suitable products, it also keeps you informed on exactly what’s in the products you’re buying.
To make life easier for our vegan customers, we have organised all the suitable products we sell into our vegan shop. You can order most of these online with delivery to your door – with more items available to click and collect from our Edinburgh stores.
We also have lots of helpful recipes here.
Food cupboard essentials
A vegan diet can include a wide variety of foods, incorporating recipes from around the world.
Excluded from this diet is anything taken from animals, such as meat, fish, dairy products, eggs, honey – and any products derived from those products.
Some useful food cupboard essentials for vegans include:
- Grains (and pseudo grains) such as oats, quinoa, buckwheat, millet and wheat
- Pulses – beans, peas and lentils
- Nuts and seeds
- Preserved fruit and vegetables – including dried, fermented and pickled
- Herbs and spices
Browse our range of vegan food cupboard essentials here.
Fresh fruit and vegetables
A well balanced diet should also include a wide range of fresh fruit and vegetables, to provide many important nutrients.
We always have a great variety of organic fresh fruit and vegetables at Real Foods – see what we have available today here.
See our Delivery page for terms.
Drinks
One of the first switches that people often make when moving to a vegan diet is from dairy milk to an alternative.
You can find a wide range of alternatives to dairy milk at Real Foods, including drinks made from oats, rice, almond, peas, soya, coconut and even potato.
We also have all kinds of suitable hot drinks, including vegan hot chocolate!
Beer and wine can sometimes be filtered (‘fined’) using animal products, so won’t always be vegan. Beer can also sometimes contain lactose (from milk). This isn’t always clear from product labels, although you can often find this information online. You can find the range of vegan alcoholic drinks we sell here.
Vegan vitamins and supplements
At Real Foods we stock a wide range of suitable supplements, including vitamins and minerals.
When following a vegan diet you might want to consider supplementing some nutrients and adding, such as vitamin B12.
Here are just a few of the vegan B12 supplements we can help you source.
Beauty and bodycare
Finding vegan beauty and bodycare can sometimes require a little bit more research than finding vegan food and drink, but there are lots of great products available.
Some non-vegan bodycare ingredients to look out for include bees wax and lanolin. Suitable beauty and bodycare products must also not be tested on animals.
Browse our range of vegan beauty and bodycare products here.
You might like to try this new range of vegan shampoos, conditioners and body wash from Alana.
Vegan snacks and confectionery
Sometimes everyone needs a treat. Nowadays there is a wide range of suitable snacks and confectionery available, from chocolate truffles to tortilla chips.
Some non-vegan ingredients to keep an eye out for in snacks and confectionery include gelatine (often found in sweets) and lactose (often found in crisps).
If you’re looking for a tasty treat, we have lots to choose from here.
Here’s a selection of our favourite vegan snacks.
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