List of Animal-derived products...for your iPod!

This is really cool.

I am pretty obsessive compulsive about writing grocery lists. I am very thorough, and list item after item in the order in which they come up in the supermarket (there may actually be a new word for this kind of obsessive compulsiveness). I think I'm so clever and organized and I pile into my car with my shopping crates and head to the store.

And like clockwork, every week there is something I seem to have forgotten to look into, especially with regard to new recipes I'm trying. If they don't come from a vegan cookbook I am very wary. While I am not a strict vegan, vegetarian cookbooks can be a bit misleading. For example, I don't consume gelatin or rennet, and I certainly don't consume any seafood, which includes fish oils. A lot of vegetarian cookbooks overlook these three categories, because in the past pescetarianism was often considered synonymous with vegetarianism, and the gelatin/rennet issue was deemed to be a part of veganism and not vegeterianism. However, it is my personal choice to not consume these products, and I am sure there are plenty of you out there in the same shoes as me.

So, finally, instead of panicking and pacing up and down the aisles with everything short of a magnifying glass over an ingredients list (which, is often fruitless all in its own, because if there are minimal amounts of these substances in the item, the company is not required by law to include them in the ingredents list), there is another option.

At home I've got a few extensive lists of what is safe/not safe with regard to my diet, but who on earth remembers to bring one of those with them everytime they go to the store? Well, I'm sure a lot of people do, but for those of us that are a wee bit more scatterbrained than that, there's now a Animal-Derived Product List available for download to your iPod!.

See, while I forget most things when I head to the store, one thing that is always in my purse is my iPod.

If you're interested in downloading the list, please check out this website. The file consists of information compiled using Happy Cow with regard to vegetarian/vegan diets. What I find especially useful is the list pertaining to cosmetics. I'm slowly transitioning into an organic vegetarian cosmetic diet as well, because you wouldn't believe how many standard issue beauty products out there are not vegetarian! Just as companies are slowly rejecting the use of animal testing, many still use animal-based substances in their products, so it's important to be mindful of this when reaching for your bottle of shampoo.

I just thought I'd quickly share this cool little link with you...now I must tend to my pot of vegan chili. I'm revising an old family recipe that traditionally uses beef, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it translates well to a vegan dish, and hopefully I can share it with you later this week.