Food suitable for a vegetarian...

I moved over to Australia in October 2000 after believing in the "better life" Australia can provide for my future children so I moved over with my parents.

When I was in England I found it extremely easy to shop for vegetarian items. All you had to do is flip the product over and see a big green V that represents that an item is suitable.

When I arrived in Australia on the 16th of October I didn't know how hard it would be for me to be a veggie. The first time I went shopping I was heart broken because a lot of snacks I got in England for veggies didn't exist in Oz.

As the years living here went on I started to find it a lot easier with more vegetarian awareness existed and some companies started to take the English trend of following the big V.

Mind you, it still is hard, I have to read the ingredients to identify with any meat byproducts exist.

See, here in Australia you can actually sell food at food outlets without actually knowing what is in them which makes it hard to eat out.

The other day I found something in the frozen section that seemed yummy. Gnocchi!

So I read the ingredients of the product because it was tomato based and me thinking oh there shouldn't be any meat products in it but their was animal fat in it.

WHY WHY WHY do companies have to do this? Make something that could be suitable for a veggie have an animal by-product in it.

I am hoping the food standards in Australia will start labeling things better.

Even better I brought a vegetarian pizza once and the product contained cheese so I got home and called the company. After 40 minutes on the phone I actually found out the vegetarian pizza had animal rennet in it.

Lucky I got a refund!