Valentine's Day for Vegans

[Guest guest]

[baltimore City Paper - opinion]I am not a vegan. But I am vege-tarian with a pair oflactose-intolerant twins at home and a wife who abhors eggs. So, wetend to eat vegan by default. And this year, for Valentine's Day, Idecided to get some vegan candy for my loved ones. The plan: head downto Rheb's Candy on Wilkens Avenue and put together a nice V-Day box.No meat. No milk. No honey. Just candy. Easy, right?Crowded into the little store with other customers like truffles in abox, I took a number and window-browsed the glass cabinets full ofchocolates filled with all varieties of fruit, cream, and nut. I'vedone my vegan homework, so I know that I've got to purchase sweetchocolate in the style it first hit the market in 1847--dark andmilkless.I had to pass on several of my favorite varieties of candy hearts andgummy sweets because they were made with gelatin. Baltimore'sVegetarian Resource Group (www.vrg.org) lists the ingredients ofgelatin as: "bones, skins, hoofs, and tendons of cows, pigs, fish andother animals." Thanks, reality; now you've gone and ruined Jell-O....Arriving home, I checked the VRG web site to find that my first forayinto vegan candy buying didn't go so well. Rheb's chocolates are heldtogether with cocoa butter and soy lecithin--both allowableingredients--but vegans also have to watch out for the egg whites andyolks used to produce some of the gooey innards.The biggest problem, however, is the sugar. The VRG warns that manysugar companies process their product through bone char--the burned-upbones of cows--which acts as a whitening agent....While vegan sweets I sampled couldn't beat the comfort and quality ofRheb's, there were definitely some animal-friendly offerings

worthtasting. So, go ahead: lose the honey and the beeswax, skip thegelatin, forget refining the sugar, because good candy can be madewithout sticking a prod, knife, or steel bolt into any animal.-- full story:http://www.citypaper.com/eat/story.asp?id=15240 http://pets.Fortheanimals7/join