When you are first starting out on the vegan diet, you might find yourself in a lot a very sticky situations. At first, you might just be aware of the obvious ingredients in your food. This is not hard to figure out, you are a vegan and do not want to see a piece of chicken, egg or meat in your food.
Then you start becoming more aware, as time passes by, of other ingredients that are more hidden such as eggs in cakes, or vegan place to eat near me other animal products in the foods that look vegan friendly. Later on, as you get more experience as a vegan, you finally become fully aware of the foods you are buying and start to realize that there are many products that look vegan by common sense but in reality they have animal by-products in them, such is the case of L-cysteine (which comes from duck feathers) or casein in soy cheese (which is derived from milk).
So how do you know when the products are really vegan?
This is something you are going to experience later on as a vegan. If you are just starting out on the vegan diet, I would suggest you start taking small steps, after all, taking meat and dairy out of your diet is a huge step for you, the environment and your health. So don't feel like you need to learn all the animal by-products at the begging, because it can make you feel frustrated. You are taking a huge decision right now and that is what matters.
So start taking this step by step. Once you feel you are comfortable taking out meat and dairy out of your diet, then start making plans to really eliminate other animal products from your diet, especially dairy and eggs, which are more tricky to eliminate. If you like foods such as pasta, cookies, cake or other baked goods, you will find that some or the majority of them contain dairy or eggs.
Once you are comfortable with that, then you should move on and take completely out of your diet any animal by-product on vegan foods. To do this you need to start doing some research of your own and start asking people about what products you should be aware of. When you are more knowledgeable of this animals by-products, then the best way to find out if the food you are buying contain one of those, is to make reading labels a habit. In this way your can be 100% sure that the food you are buying is completely vegan.
By the way, do you want to learn and discover everything you need to know about the vegan diet so you could reach a better quality of life?
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