A look at the offline and online offering of Vbites

I popped down to the opening of Heather Mills Vegan cafe ‘Vbites‘ on Saturday as Iâ??d heard whispers of its opening for a few months and fancied seeing what she had done with the old fish eatery that used to be there before. Another think that I wanted to see was how ‘Vbites’ was promoting itself, being interested in media and the way ethical ventures make that leap from hippy idealism (something I have struggled with myself) to cool rich media and an understanding of social capitol.

The opening itself was as my actor friend pointed out “a little frayed around its vegan edges”, with a very loud Glenn Miller band for the old folks, a dodgy microphone for Heathers opening speech and more ‘old media’ journalists that you could shake a stick at.

Heather however looks superb and I was at the front cheering her on as she appeared on top of the building relaxing against the ‘Vbites’ diner style sign. I’ve been an admirer of Heather for years, ever since she appeared on the Big Breakfast and described how she lost her leg by being hit by a police motorcycle. The fact that she was married to a pop star bla bla, doesnâ??t really interest me and I much prefer to read about her animal welfare exploits.

As I was leaving I collared one of their PR girls and said that Iâ??d like her to guest blog and that she needed some advice on her website. I was tempted to grab Heather as she popped out the back of Vbites and beg her to get a new developer, but she was on the phone so I thought Iâ??d leave it.

Now, the Vbites website:

Vbites website

Whatâ??s wrong with the website:

• The menu does not contain keywords specific to the campaign
• The content has not real direction on any of the pages
• No specific menu pages
• Their are no social networking links on the homepage
• No RSS feed for subscriptions to the newsletter
• No real calls to action
• No SEO across the site based on the lack on title tags, keyword inclusion etc
• Lack of pages on the site, if the sitemap is to be trusted
• The press and media page has no rich media or any real content
• The lack of humanity on the site is frightening - add some images of the place, the workers, heather, kids eating lunches, the skaters outside
• There are so many opportunities here for some great social media, so many aspects to the cafe that can be drawn upon to make it both an on and offline success.
• No internal linking
• More inbound links from relevant sources

I do find it unfortunate that allot of vegan and ethical sites are missing the basics of good design and SEO, it doesnâ??t seam important in the grand scheme of things but it does make a profound difference as to how users see you. Any site, no matter what it is saying needs to be making a media statement about its efforts, services or products… it is the fundamentals of it being a website and with all the competition out there, sites like Vbites need to stand out from the crowd or risk just becoming a dead weight online page that tarnishes the offline appeal of a great concept.

I’ll think of a few nice little ideas for Vbites social media and see if we canâ??t get it moving.

One last thing that I think would be nice for Vbites to is to add ‘deliveries’ to its offerings, swift deliveries of ‘Mrs. swirly’ vegan ice cream for example.

I did have difficulty finding any articles to add below this, as it seams most of the press that turned up were only there to slag her off, a bit pathetic on a sunny day to head down there just for that, but … who am i to judge.

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Hullo readers,

Yes its been about 2 months and i’ve been working on social media tracking tools and considering ditching Minkbaby and develop another blog.. BUT, hey i like the Mink and i’m getting over the fact that Ali has not left the team to go have babies.

So what i’m going to do i shift focus a little and include a lot more posts about ethical branding and ethical websites to read, i’m going to try and get around to posting a few review videos as i’ve got some fab ‘organic dipping oil’ and ‘vegan chocolate’ to try out and i’m going to get back on track with going to events and such like and add some short snappy posts daily about current green issues, animal rights stuff and sites you should look out for.

Well, thats about that, many thanks for staying around and i hope you enjoy the new slant

claire

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Vegan margarine replacing dairy margarine

When i first morphed into a Vegan one of my major fears was loosing my beloved margarine on my toast and crumpets, so when i discovered ‘Pure’ i didnt look back. The other great things about ‘Pure’ is its healthy cholesterol levels and a source of Omega 3.

The Sunflower oil ‘Pure’ that i prefer (basically as it tastes just like normal margarine) is FREE FROM:

- Dairy products
- GM ingredients
- Hydrogenated oils
- Artificial colourings & preservatives
- Added flavourings
- Soya products
- Gluten

Pure dairy free spread

Check out the Aldo Zilli’s Monthly recipe using the ‘Pure’ vegan spread as one of the main ingredients and i’ll try and post a few more of these.

Photos and observations from the coolest vegan festival in the UK

I heard about the Vegan Fayre from Ali and thought that it would be something that Minkbaby should pop along to, so i popped. Well i popped, after going to the Brighton Dome finding out the Vegan fest wasnt there and then arriving at the Brighton Centre to find a half naked guy attempting to swallow a pretty big sword. Sorry i didnt take a photo of it, but heres an empty entrance hall and a shiney floor.

The main hall was up stairs and bustling with stalls catering to all kinds of colourful veggies and vegans. They were walking around talking and bustling, â??I mentioned the bustling right?â?� Buy mostly they were looking for Vegan cheese, an obsession I too have felt drawn too. So off I set across to the far end of the grand hall where a number of people were mingling.

So, I found it an entire corner of the room devoted to cheese or rather sheese, the alternative to Dairy and the only thing in the room disappearing at 100 mph, one tiny toothpick at a time. Ok, so.. you ask â??Whatâ??s its like this cheese alternative?â?�â?¦ and I am going to be honest with you, the few little morsels I had at the stab and grab stall I enjoyed. But and thatâ??s a big but, my further purchase of smoked Sheese from my local Deli left me a little cold and I am still missing my old cheese buddy. But i have faith and i am sure i will find it soon.

The Viva stand had me grabbing for as much animal welfare leafletage as i could possibly contain in two hands. Viva’s adverts have impact because of their honesty, a calf sitting on a plate, a man in a business suit suckling from a Dairy cow and the sweet face of a piglet looking out from the glossy leaflet - all making a pretty poignant point individually and all begging the question â??why?â?� not a soft cuddly â??aw we shouldnâ??t eat them, they are cute.. whereâ??s my beef burgerâ?� but a â??Whow, is it really right that they should suffer so much for addictionâ?� kind of question. Viva website

I had a lovely chat to Caroline from ‘Good Oil’ and will be covering the company in more detail in a future post

The Good oil website

Alan knight from international animal rescue is a great guy and they do some fantastic work, the fact that they a few bears off putting an end to the dancing bear trade in India was inspiring. You can read about it and help them on their website IAR

Infinity foods really didnt want to have their picture taken, but i took it anyway. Infinity are the ‘vegan nuts’ they have all you would ever need as a vegan and never leave you wanting more. You can check them out on infinity foods

Being a big fan of Keith Mann a former ALF organiser, this stand was very interesting. I bought the book “Dusk til dawn’ with a picture of Britches the tiny monkey part of the famous ALF rescue and will be reviewing it in a later post. The kid and his mum were lovely and very informed about Keith and his work. You can read more about him here the think bookshop .asp

Caroline was a little hung over but still very professional, she makes all her own vegan chocolate eggs and i couldnt resist buying one for my flat mate for Easter. I’ll be reviewing the egg, once consumed in a later post the chocolate alchemist

This charity is wonderful, they rescue and care for monkeys that are kept as pets in the UK, something that i couldnt belive was still happening here. I am going to pop down to visit them in the next couple of months monkey sanctuary

If you have read any of the other posts you will know that i wasnt too happy about the sentance dealt out to the SHAC members recently. I did ask how they are and the girl on the stand said that they are all doing well, but are all still in prison. I know alot of people find the methods that SHAC use distasteful but i have to say that the methods Huntingdon use are far more disgusting and disturbing. Go to the SHAC website to read about it.

Big shout out to conscious chocolate they are by far the most amasing vegan chocolate company. I took a few bars of the essentia organge oil and mint oil into work and my omnivorous workmates fell over themselves to munch down.

I also met the fantastic Karin Ridgers who runs ‘Mad Promotions’ and ‘Veggie Vision’, i had a great chat with Karin who was busy protecting a plate full of vegan cake and will be writing an article on ‘Veggie Vision‘.

I was very impressed with the Eco Garage, they sell electric cars and i for one think that the funky little orange numbers looked fab. Charging your phone and your car overnight seams like a good idea to me. I’ll go into more depth in a future post but for now click on the image to go through to the website.

I left the festival feeling inspired, the people there were active interesting individuals that spent their time doing and not procrastinating. It was a good feeling being one of them

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The Vegan Society's 30 Day Vegan Pledge 2009

So as some of you may know, I took The Vegan Society’s 30 Day Vegan Pledge in January 2009. I had been meaning to review that experience for a couple of weeks but wanted to let it sink in (and also seemed to have no time at the moment!). I was reminded however by a blog post from Big Green Purse called Ten Reasons Why You Should Eat Less Meat, and suddenly I really wanted to review my 30 vegan days.

Did I lose any weight during my 30 Day Vegan Pledge 2009?

Veganism - not necessarily your key to lasting weight loss

Everyone asks me this because everyone seems to think that all vegans can eat is fruit and vegetables, which would, one might properly reason, result in a supermodel-type physique but not for me I’m afraid.

No, in fact I gained a lot of weight. Much of this was due to my own personal addiction to junk food - I was so panicked at the idea of giving up the food I use to get throught the day (I know, awful isn’t it) that I spent a week eating everything in sight and put on 14 pounds. Not the best start in the world. But I wasn’t worried because I too thought that once I was eating vegan I would lose all those pounds and more. But twas not to be.

An example of the kinds of vegan junk food on offer

I went from regular junk food to vegan junk food - oh yes, the vegan world is awash with meat and dairy analogues, that attempt to reproduce the flavours of animal fats and fluids by piling in the sugar - not exactly a good way to lose any weight, and probably not that great for your teeth either. Some I liked - most I did not like, but either way many were eaten, some in an attempt to sate my junk food monster, some for the sake of trying things out and some because I had to eat something other than tomatos on toast.

I if ever manage to become vegan I will not be eating this vegan junk food - most of it doesn’t taste that good anyway - the makers of the vegan cheeses I tried should be prosecuted for crimes against the human palette! I wondered many times if some of these vegans had just forgotten what cheese and chocolate actually taste like… but anyway, no being vegan for a month did not result in weight loss for me - some of that was just because of my junk food addiction, which I am now having treated by a professional counsellor (diets don’t work so it must be somethnig else) and some of it was just down to the bad vegan food choices I made.

My extreme reaction to this vegan experiment and the associated weight gain at least led me to get some help for what is clearly a mental health issue and notso much about food. So I see that as a plus really.

Were People Supportive of My Vegan Month?

Whoever said being vegan was socially advantageous has probably not tried it

No so much.

My husband was actually great about it and didn’t protest when I refused to cook meat for him. Others were either politely non-commital, a few were slightly passive-agressive about it and some treated me to out-right mockery and derision. I began to dread eating in company.

Once the month was over, pretty much everyone I knew told me that it was basically a silly way to live, which is fine - people are entitled to their opinons but I was surprised at how much resistence there was to my being vegan for a month, when no one castigates me for all the junk food I eat (well not to my face anyway :-D)

Did I have any revelations as to how I could more easily integrate a vegan life style into my life?

Eureka!

I did indeed, but they took a while to surface.

Just after I had finished my 30 Day Vegan Pledge, Claire and I went to Total Raw Food’s open day, and among other things we listened to Raw Food Coach Jessica Fenton talk about Superfoods, Raw Food Veganism and many other things. She also talked about the value of gradually integrating healthier and more ethical foods into our diets rather than trying to switch over night, which often does lead to giving up. I have taken that on board and have started trying to take a more gradual approach.

Have I made any changes to my diet now that I’m no longer doing the 30 Day Vegan Pledge?

Oh yes!

Milk

Milk - Like taking candy from a baby...only worse

I seem to have lost my taste for milk - even to the point where I don’t want it in my coffee, which is a mini-miracle as I have been addicted to very strong coffee with lots of milk since I was about ten years old. Now I prefer my coffee weaker and black, which is healthier for me and kinder to cows.

Eggs

Eeeew!

I cannot eat eggs. I feel too bad for the chickens. Even the free range ones, because free range isn’t really a solution - if every animal we ate/used was free range we’d soon run out of room to grow food for them and us, and we’d be out of space to live. What we need to do is make smarter food choices. Eggs are out for me. That said though, I do eat things that have eggs in them, and milk too - like cake (of course) but I still see this as progress.

Meat

It's just not true

I am eating much less meat and I feel bad about it when I do eat it. I have started making my own pasta sauces (without milk or flour). Basically I cook up some vegetables, such as courgettes, with some vegan stock (it’s nicer than the non-vegan kind, I found), some white wine and garlic then I use a hand blender to mush it, pour it over some wholewheat pasta and bobs your uncle, yummy pasta sauce.

Cheese

Cheese, tastes good, but made with cruelty

I still love cheese even though I know it’s icky and contains cow stomach. I’m eating less of it. That’s about the best I can do right now. Jess Fenton, the Raw Food Coach, also mentioned in her talk at Total Raw Food’s open day, that sometimes the desire for cheese is actually a desire for a pure source of sodium (or something like that), and so I might follow that up as she mentioned a raw form of salt that is supposed to sort that out.

Raw Vegetables

Mmmmm - nicer than I had thought!

I have discovered a love of vegetables that I didn’t know I had - especially raw vegetables. Even now when I’m having a junk food session, I find myself reaching for raw tomatos, cucumber and peppers to go with them, where as before I would have eschewed them. As a result my daughter has developed quite an obsession with  what she calls “OOdumber” or as we like to call it, cucumber. She eats it by the bowl load, but does prefer it with the skin off.  So we’re both benefitting and hopefully she won’t develop the damaging eating patterns that I have.

So what did I gain from you 30 Day Vegan Pledge?

Well that’s a good question.

Here is a list of things I gained form the 30 Day Vegan Pledge 2009:

• Sixteen pounds in weight (eek!)
• Guilt everytime I eat meat
• An inability to eat eggs
• A love of black coffee - I no longer like it with milk, which is kind of a revelation for me as I used to drink it very strong with lots of milk - really bad for me and for cows. And now I don’t do it.
• The knowledge that the terms ‘vegan’ and ‘healthy’ are not necessarily synonymous
• The realisation that I needed professional help with my eating issues and not another ‘diet’
• The recognition that many peoples’ reaction to veganism is one based on misinformation and fear of change.
• The insight that I can transition gradually towards veganism rather than try to make a dramatic switch over night.
• A new found love of raw vegetables

It’s a mixed bag and no mistake, but it is progress towards an eating pattern that is less environmentally damaging, more healthy and more ethical, even if a few of the steps seem to be taking me backwards.

What is your conclusion about your 30 Day Vegan Pledge 2009?

I think it was a good learning experience and it has definitely helped me make progress on the road to becoming more careful with the choices that I make. I’d do it again. I’d probably make more use of my vegan mentor too.

How will all this be reflected in your food choices from now on?

So I have decided that the best way for me to go is to try to have a raw breakfast, a vegan or vegetarian lunch and a free range dinner. Hopefully this way I can start to wean my body off animal products and harmful E numbers and encourage a reliance on healthier foods without stirring up my binge reflex. I think the therapy will help with that too, which can only be a good thing. The only thing worse than finding a problem is ignoring that problem and letting it fester. I resolve to fester no more!

• Have you ever tried to make your diet more environmentally friendly, more ethical, or more healthy?

• Was it easy? Was it hard? Did you give up or are you getting there, one increment at a time?

• Do you also find that you can’t seem to put down the junk food and ricochet from fad diet to fad diet?

• Would you be interested in trying 30 days as a Vegatarian, a Vegan or a Raw Food Vegan and documenting your experience in a review for Minkbaby?

We love to hear from you, so why not get in touch now - ali@minkbaby.co.uk

Total Raw Food Open Day

The Fear

I knew that I was scared of going to this event, and I was pleased to find out that Claire was also scared.

Is it?

I was scared because during my 30 Day Vegan challenge I had observed lots of vegans and raw foodists being quite narky with one another about whether you could wear leather under any circumstances, the plight of bees (i.e. whether or not a vegan can eat honey), and whether or not failing to supplement raw and or vegan children was a form a child abuse (or not) and so on and so forth, at times ad nausea.

Of course there were also lovely sites and forums where this was either not the case of kept to the minimum but I had been a bit shocked by the vitriol I had stumbled across, whenever I found it - perhaps that just shows how naive I am rather than how chiaroscuro the vegan landscape is, but hey…

Vegetarians (and more recently vegans in all their forms) have been perceived by many (including me) as being undernourished hippies, spouting peace, love and slogans like “no food with a face” (yes, I know, I don’t know what I thought animal rights activists were about but there we are…)

The reality is that wherever politics and activism lurks, there too you will find feelings running high and the diligent fervour of the religious convert. Did I mention that religious fervour also makes me nervous?

So when I said to Claire, on the morning of the Total Raw Food’s Open Day, “Let’s not go!” I was perfectly serious. And I am perfectly serious when I say to you now that I am 120% glad that she felt the fear and did it anyway, called us a taxi and made me go with her.

So what was the Total Raw Food Open Day Like?

Although we were technically late by the time we got there, in actual fact our timing couldn’t have been better. We took our seats a few minutes before Tom began to introduce the Barefoot Doctor, and had just enough time to discover and rootle through our Total Raw Food goody bags before settling down to enjoy the office-opening ceremony, some barefoot banter and general warrior wisdom.

The Barefoot Doctor Opens Total Raw Food’s New Offices (but not in this picture)

The Urban Warrior Himself

I would love to tell you all about what Barefoot had to say. Sadly I was so busy listening that it never occurred to me to take notes. This was error number one. Luckily Claire had the wherewithal to take notes, and once she has conveyed those to me, I will replace this apologetic paragraph with a lovely summary of what he had to say.

Unfortunately Claire was not immune from making the odd schoolboy (or girl) error - it was only yesterday that she confessed to me that had thought she was filming the talk and realised about a quarter of the way in that she hadn’t turned the digital recorder on! We have so much to learn! Tom and Jess were miles ahead of us however and appeared to have engaged someone to take pictures and to record the talks, so we are hoping that they will make those available to us so that we can post them on this post.

We were hoping to get to have a chat with the Barefoot Doctor but he had to dash almost as soon as his talk was finished, so we settled for vegan fruit punch and some chit chat with the other attendees.

Jess’s Raw Food Demo

Following this was Jess’s raw food demo, which included useful information about the raw super foods she was using (origin, quality, ethical supply, practical uses in food and health benefits thereof). The proof of the pudding is traditionally in the eating, and Claire and I were delighted to be presented with raw vegan chocolate ice cream to try.

Now for anyone who hasn’t tried any kind of vegan substitute for dairy (cheese and chocolate are the worst offenders here), you should know that there are many products out there that profess to be just as good or even better than their dairy counterparts and, for the most part, according to my research so far, most of the purveyors of these non-dairy substitutes must have pants that are currently on fire.  By and large, the word ‘yuck’ doesn’t begin to cover it. During my 30 Day Vegan Challenge I would frequently wonder if other vegans have been vegan so long that they have forgotten what chocolate is supposed to taste like in the first place. Perhaps this is how they appear to have been so easily duped. But I digress…

Well, I was ready for an experience like that. Yuck. What I got from this raw chocolate ice cream was one of the smoothest, richest, most chocolaty ice cream experiences I have ever had. Seriously. YUM! If this is an example of Jess’s raw food desserts, then I am going to have to get myself her raw food desserts DVD demo.

We did get a chance to have a brief chat with Tom and Jess, but they were understandably pretty busy making sure that everyone was getting the most out their open day. They were both very friendly and Jess looked radiant - a raw food vegan diet is clearly not a problem, even during pregnancy - I certainly didn’t have Jess’s energy when I was 34 weeks pregnant!

It would have been nice if…

It would have been nice if the demo could have been done on a raised platform, so that people at the back (like Claire and I) could have seen the demo rather than just heard it. Or perhaps the demo could have happened more towards the middle of the room, with onlookers in a kind of semi circle. Aside from that though, the day seemed to go very well, with herbal teas, fruit punch and raw vegan snacks on offer and lots of super foods and other raw products on sale for those who wanted to shop without the usual p&p charge, and take advantage of the 10% discount that was offered to us that day.

We met some lovely people, some of whom were vegan, some of whom were raw and some of whom were not. No one made caustic comments about my leather boots. Everyone seemed very open minded and interesting, which was lovely. I was so glad that my online experience was balanced by meeting people in the flesh. I can’t wait to meet more vegans, raw food or not. I am much less afraid, and I am ready to make raw ice cream ASAP!

A Gentle Way to a Vegan Diet

An easier way to get on board with vegansim

The thing that really struck a chord in me though was something that Jess talked about during her demo - the idea of introducing quality, natural whole foods into your diet and observing that a person who does so will most likely begin to phase out other kinds of foods, without having to forcibly deprive themselves of the unhealthy foods they like.

This not only makes a lot of sense to me because I want to continue eating as I did before my 30 Day Vegan Challenge but also because I do have a food problem which is exacerbated - triggered, even - by my trying to cut out the junk foods that I crave. As soon as I try to ‘make myself’ eat a certain way, I am beset by uncontrollable urges to binge. If I donâ??t censor what I eat, the binging doesn’t happen.

Jess’s words made me feel hopeful because I had started to think that ethical and healthy eating could only have an effect on you if you ruthlessly and wilfully eradicated all but the purest foods from your diet, which did not bode well for me. Listening to Jess gave me a new perspective - a less extreme approach that may help me to improve my eating, from an ethical and healthier stand point, in a gradual and therefore more attainable way. So thanks for that Jess, and we wish you lots of luck and health for the rest of your pregnancy and all that comes after!