On a walk home, I just took a peek at the menu of this local Caribbean place that says it has a “vegan” chipotle aioli. I looked at all the ingredients, and while it confirms that it does, in fact, use vegan mayonnaise, it said it had honey! And this place is actively labeling it as a vegan product! To be fair, at least they list the ingredients, but calling it vegan is wrong and misleading. Now, I like to read all ingredient lists on everything, but imagine a vegan reading the phrasing “vegan chipotle aioli” and thinking it sounds so good that they just glance right over the smaller details and order it not knowing it has honey. And furthermore, would it kill them to use agave or maple syrup?
This is giving me the anxiety that there could be places who do shit like this without even telling you what the ingredients are. That kind of paranoia makes me eat out a lot less to begin with which, in hindsight, is a good thing anyway.
The in-person menu explicitly lists it as vegan, but this is what the entry looks like on their website:
I think a lot of people don’t think of honey as an animal product. They only know about milk, eggs and cheese. But of course you’re totally right.