The ethics of where vegans buy food

I need a special diet, to avoid lumps, though I can have rice as it digests easily. I have Tilda plain Basmati and Tilda Lemon & Herbs Basmati, which is delicious.

Everything else is liquid or purée. I have a litre of Alpro no sugars soya drink each day, pure orange juice, Alpro chocolate and Alpro strawberry flavour drinks, I can have the Alpro lumpless soya desserts and I have one sometimes but I prefer the drinks.

The chocolate one is quite strong, so as it has a screw top, I often have half of a 250 millilitre minibox diluted with an equal volume of the Alpro no sugars soya drink. so I get two chocolate drinks a while apart for the same amount of sugar.

The Alpro no sugars drink has no sweeteners. Alas, most drinks advertised as no sugars have sweeteners and I won't consume sweeteners.

Alas, some of the branded drinks for medical problems have sweetener in the ingredients, I really don't understand why.

As topping for the rice I have sachets of early stage babyfood, I use five each day, spread over three meals. There is a wide variety that are all of vegan, no gluten, purée.

I devised the diet to keep me out of hospital and it has worked for three years thus far.

I wondered if I had got it right,so I asked my doctor for a referral to an NHS hospital dietician. The consultation was over the telephone and he took the details, then afterwards calculated it all and reported back to my doctor that it is fine.

I keep below 90 grammes of sugar each day.

Have you been advised about what else to eat and indeed what not to eat?

Do you avoid wheat and other gluten-containing grains? I do.

Just to clarify.

I wrote As topping for the rice I have sachets of early stage babyfood, I use five each day, spread over three meals. There is a wide variety that are all of vegan, no gluten, purée.

I need to add at the end,

Yet there are quite a lot of babyfood sachets that are not vegan or contain gluten or are for older babies and not so smooth, so I only have a carefully chosen subset of the sachets that are available.

I haven't really been able to get into any kind of routine with my meals, stardreamer.
I have to ask my neighbours to kindly fetch me in some milk, bread, cereal, (or big bowl of salad ) and it very much limits what I eat.

Lack of finances also plays a part, as well as being well enough to put together a meal, and then to eat it.

I have hopes, now, of being able to get to a shop at some point, and choose and buy my own ingredients, so I can take charge of my intake.
I have read that I should avoid salt and sugar, both of which I am trying to do.

I really want to get to lidl and try one of their veg boxes, because i really do enjoy vegetables.

MissA I think that Aldi do click and collect now, would that be of any help?

I hadn't thought of that, because of the "collect" part, but again, I might have the means, soon, to work out a taxi or something to collect?
My area also run a minibus shopping service, but up until now I haven't been eligible to join.
I'm not sure I could walk around a supermarket at the minute, but I could work on that as a goal.

I am not certain about salt.

The advice is not to exceed six grammes per day. I have a lot less than that, but what I am unsure about is that I think the body needs some sodium, of which salt is a source, but I don't know how much.

I did once see a television programme about cookery and a chef stated that salt is the key to flavour control.

I was aghast at this.

A lot of the instant stock cubes and the like are very high in salt, often, to my mind, a bit misleading as they tend to be labelled as so many grammes of salt per 100 mililitres when made up as directed.

That when made up as directed can be something like a direction to dissolve the cube in 500 millilitres of water.

So it seems those cubes have a lot of salt in them.

I have found it impossible to find cans or powders of soup that is all of vegan, no gluten, no lumps simultaneously.

So on a cold winter's day I made some with some heated water and a couple of sachets of Ella's Kitchen baby food. It was lovely.

MissAdventure

I hadn't thought of that, because of the "collect" part, but again, I might have the means, soon, to work out a taxi or something to collect?
My area also run a minibus shopping service, but up until now I haven't been eligible to join.
I'm not sure I could walk around a supermarket at the minute, but I could work on that as a goal.

I was thinking that if you are going to have click and collect you might as well have it delivered, though I suppose that if you are collecting that as you would be there you could refuse some item and then go into the store and choose something yourself, while still not having to have gone round the store getting most of it.

And please bear in mind that you will need to get the shopping home.

How are taxi drivers about helping? Is humping stuff for the customer regarded as part of the job or is it that some will do it and others take the line that they are a driver not a porter?

Would a taxi driver see you safely into your home or just want to drop you off at kerbside, or does it vary depending upon customer need and driver attitude?

I think it might vary depending on the driver.
A lot of them do know me, and have watched me getting more and more unwell, when I was working, so they might be sympathetic.
As you say, though, delivery might be the best option, for now.

Anyway, I don't want to spoil this thread with my ailments (I'm fed up with listening to myself about it all)

It is just worth considering people's circumstances, though, when judging what others do, I think.

Just a final thing MissA.
If you do decide to get your groceries delivered - Morrisons are
the best.
Ocado are good too, but a bit more pricey.
(I am a the absolute doyenne of online grocery shopping ? - although I’m not entirely sure what doyenne means…)

I have used Morrisons from the Amazon app; mostly because it's big enough for me to see on my phone, mostly.
My eyes are getting better, though, so who knows where I might order from in future?
New phone, new fingers, new eyes = new woman!

As you are she Fanny then it will be something good.

LINK > Definition of the word doyenne

Ah! Thank you! Yes, that’s me alright!

I have had excellent delivery service from Sainsburys.

With Morrisons and Ocado you know when you order what is, and more importantly what isn’t, in stock.
It comes from a warehouse, not a store.
The use by dates are better too.
And it comes in bags.

I've found Iceland pretty good, and their minimum spend for delivery is less (I think)
£40 is too much for me to spend on a regular basis.

I usually wait until I need coffee, and things to bump up the spend.

FannyCornforth

With Morrisons and Ocado you know when you order what is, and more importantly what isn’t, in stock.
It comes from a warehouse, not a store.
The use by dates are better too.
And it comes in bags.

But I think that they insist on substitutions if something is out of stock and they choose the substitute.

I don't know if the customer is allowed to refuse the substitute.

Do they charge full price if the substitute is dearer than what you ordered?

I think all the places I have ordered from have multiple options regarding substitutions.
You can allow some , sllow them only on items you allow.
They don't charge any more than the price you would have paid.

SD yes, you can refuse the substitute. Not that you often have them

With Sainsbury’s, if they have to substitute an item, you can choose not to accept it. If you accept it, but it costs more, they refund you the difference.

FannyCornforth

With Morrisons and Ocado you know when you order what is, and more importantly what isn’t, in stock.
It comes from a warehouse, not a store.
The use by dates are better too.
And it comes in bags.

If I order from Morrisons, it comes from my local branch, you see the pickers getting things for online orders when you’re doing your shopping in the store. It might be because I live in the sticks, I think the nearest warehouse is in Bristol, which is about 60 miles away. They are good on sell by dates though, I think the pickers know to get stuff from the back of the shelf.

Hold on. How have I missed this. Morrisons deliver in bags? Yes yes I know I will go to hell but is this right?

Mine doesn’t, it comes in crates which you unpack and return.

It's that Fanny getting me all excited

Galaxy

Hold on. How have I missed this. Morrisons deliver in bags? Yes yes I know I will go to hell but is this right?

Not sure about Morrisons but Tesco (hush my mouth!) and Waitrose have the option to choose bags if you wish.

As we have to put our food waste into polythene bags now we choose the option occasionally so that they get re-used. The food waste is squeezed out at the processing plant and the polythene bags sent to make electricity.

I have been using Tesco online for 2 years and have never seen that option since they stopped using bags.