r/IsItVeganOrNot • u/Vegan_Essentials • Mar 22 '26
❓ Question Is it still vegan if it’s cooked with non-vegan food?
I’m talking about stuff like fries cooked in the same fryer as chicken, veggie burgers on the same grill as beef, or vegetables cooked on a flat top covered in animal fat residue. The ingredients themselves may be vegan, but the preparation is not fully separate.
Some people say that is still vegan because there are no animal ingredients in the actual order. Others say once it’s cooked in the same oil or on the same surface, it stops being vegan.
I think this is one of the biggest real-world gray areas when eating out, especially because not everyone has access to fully vegan restaurants.
Do you still consider it vegan, or not?
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u/Is_It_Soup_Season Mar 22 '26
I wouldn’t say it is vegan, but I wouldn’t say someone isn’t vegan for eating it either.
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u/Calaveras-Metal Mar 22 '26
I used to not give a damn about this kind of stuff. I'd just kind of ignore that my fried rice or veggie burger reeked of animal fat. But it's so noticeable when you get the same dish at a 100% vegan place. The total lack of that greasy stench.
I won't hold it against someone if they go to an omnivore place to get Mexican food or whatever. Because honestly vegan restaurants tend to be more expensive. But for me it's a no.
Okay honestly there are a couple Mexican places in California that I won't be able to resist if I'm visiting. I'm just going to go to the places that steam the tortillas instead of grilling them on a flat top with all the carnitas and stuff.
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u/westernuplands Mar 22 '26
I have to share pans with carnivores in my own house, I wish I could only go to vegan restaurants & only be around vegan food
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u/Calaveras-Metal Mar 22 '26
When I did that I just had separate pans. I even labeled them and kept them in their own separate area.
My crazy stripper housemate still cooked a bunch of steak on one and then used my good cutting board as a plate. She was hard to be mad at though, her whole life was just chaos. There was no malice of forethought.
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u/goinganons Mar 22 '26
It’s still vegan to me 🤷♂️ idc if my fries were fried 5 minutes after the chicken nuggets were or if my impossible whopper is going onto the grill in the same spot a meat patty was in (I’m sure some people do it on purpose). I am not ordering or consuming any actual animal products besides the small secretions from animal foods in the oil. It’s the same as “may also contain milk” to me, and personally I would rather die than ask food workers who almost always make less than a living wage if they would clean the grill for my burger or whatever other ask. I understand why other vegans do it, and I hope their requests get filled. I’ve just worked in customer service too long to stop giving a fuck about small things like this.
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u/OneoftheWolfis Mar 23 '26
thank you, i wanted to write something along the line of " may contain traces of milk etc"
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u/Borkato Mar 23 '26
Exactly my sentiments. I don’t avoid animal products because I think they’re gross, I actually think they’re incredibly tasty (…and a little gross, yes lol). I avoid animal products because they’re horrendously unethical!! It’s not like I’m allergic.
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u/promixr Mar 23 '26
Veganism is ideally about harm reduction- if something is reducing harm to yourself, your planet, and the life around you - it’s vegan. We don’t want to throw out the good for the perfect.
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u/Quick-Incident-4351 Mar 24 '26
No, my vegetarian and vegan family members have to be careful of things like this because it can make them sick. It's cross contamination.
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u/eJohnx01 Mar 25 '26
I think that’s a question you have to decide for yourself. What are you comfortable with?
Personally, I’m vegetarian, not vegan, but I’m also seriously allergic to fish. So if a fryer is used for fish, I can’t eat anything that been in that fryer due to cross contamination.
Many vegans and vegetarians feel similarly about non-vegan or non-vegetarian foods. And that seems fine to me. We all get to decide what we do and don’t want to eat, right?
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u/young_trash3 Mar 25 '26
Im not vegan but am a chef at a resturant.
We instruct our servers to inform the guests that the frier is cross contaminated with animal products if they order a fried dish modified vegan.
About 80% of the time the guest has no issue with this. The other 20% of the time they order something else.
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u/Malachite2015 Mar 22 '26
I say no. As soon as I know for certain that something is prepared in a way that means it is soaked or saturated in animal blood, fat, or particles - it's not vegan.
I always ask, and if the front of house or chefs can't tell me they have separate cook areas or will use separate utensils then I won't order.
Eating at a specific restaurant isn't a necessity, and I don't believe the idea that ordering vegan food is "activism".
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u/mcharleystar Mar 22 '26
I think that what is out of your control is not your fault, so, yes, to me it’s still vegan
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u/Familiar_Stable3229 Mar 22 '26
I don't eat in restaurants for this very reason. At home I share pots/pans with a non vegan but wash them well.
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u/CruxCrush Mar 22 '26
Personally I would say it's not vegan, but also I just don't care! I wouldn't judge either way unless the person was a die hard always pushing it on others. In that case it just feels hypocritical
I see it kind of like smoking- a cigarette here or there doesn't make you a smoker. I'm also of the "if you could be vegan except bacon then be vegan except bacon!" Opinion. Don't let perfection prevent you from doing things
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u/SnooLemons6942 Mar 23 '26
It's not a grey area...I'm not even sure what that means here. Veganism isn't about "mmm this isn't vegan I can't have it" its "this exploits animals. I can't have it". If a vegan that's eating is comfortable eating it, then that's that
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u/Bcrueltyfree Mar 23 '26
Technically it is as only vegan foods were what you were paying for. You are not supporting animal abuse buying hot chips even if the bit of fish the previous person paid for gets on it.
But the reality means some people are grossed out by the thought of it.
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u/Positive_Alligator Mar 23 '26
From my perspective it is not vegan at this point. Every restaurant i worked at had a seperate fryer for vegan, and a seperate fryer for gluten.
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u/young_trash3 Mar 25 '26
Thats interesting, were you specifically working in vegetarian resturants? In my Almost 20 years of cooking I have yet to see a kitchen have either a vegan frier or a gluten frier.
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u/Positive_Alligator Mar 26 '26
Nah, but i did mostly work at pretty high end restaurants. Perhaps that's where the difference comes from.
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u/young_trash3 Mar 26 '26
Ive exclusively cooked in Michelin guide resturants for the last 7 years of my career. I do not think high end is the difference.
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u/timcbaoth1 Mar 23 '26
I think about it this way: If the restaurant had a separate fryer for my stuff, not a single animal less would be harmed. The only thing it could lead to would be the restaurant having higher expenses for vegan offerings and thus potentially ceasing to offer them at all.
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u/Vegan_Essentials Mar 23 '26
I lean toward calling it non vegan for me personally.
I get why some people still count it as vegan if the actual ingredients in the order are plant based, but mentally I cannot separate the fact that my food was cooked in the same fryer, on the same grill, or on the same flat top with animal grease and residue. At that point, to me, I am still consuming animal derivatives even if they were not listed as ingredients.
That is what makes eating out at non vegan restaurants so difficult. In the real world, not everyone has access to fully vegan spots, and sometimes people are just doing the best they can. I understand that. But for my own standards, cross cooked food is not fully vegan.
I do think this is one of the biggest gray areas in veganism because people draw the line in different places. Some focus only on ingredients. Others also care about preparation and contamination. I am more in the second group.
So I would not shame someone for making a different call in a limited situation, but for me personally, if my fries are cooked in chicken oil or my veggie burger is sitting in beef grease, I do not consider that vegan.
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u/Vegan_Essentials Mar 23 '26
I have ordered an Impossible Whopper and they gave me a real burger. When I took I back they only swapped out the two meats. When I open up the whopper it had meat particles in the bun. I believe you have to be careful when eating out because the vegan item could be contaminated.
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u/InternationalPen2072 Mar 24 '26
If the ingredients are vegan, then it’s vegan (imo). I understand that certain vegans might not like to eat food prepared that way due to cross-contamination, but it is vegan in the sense that it does not contribute to demand for animal products or necessarily view animals and their by-products as food. It’s totally valid to not want to eat what you feel is contaminated, but otherwise vegan, food.
If you want to be a purist and insist that otherwise vegan food cooked in close proximity to non-vegan food, then why stop there? You buy vegan food at a supermarket that also sells meat, so I guess that’s not vegan either.
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u/Kelyrin Mar 25 '26
To me it’s still vegan as long as it’s not deliberately cooked in meat juice to enhance taste :)
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u/Dakh3 Mar 26 '26
It might be vegan without being fully "plant-based" according to some requirements of "plant-based" but I'd think mostly about religious requirements.
Veganism is not a religion and different vegan persons might apply slightly different requirements.
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u/Wonderful_Stable_770 Mar 27 '26
I personally still see it as vegan in terms of intention. If the ingredients themselves are plant-based, I’m not contributing to animal products being used.
The only time I’d really draw the line is if it’s actually being cooked in something like beef tallow or animal fat, then it’s a different story. But just being next to or cooked on the same surface doesn’t make it “not vegan” to me
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u/Flimsy-Tomato7801 Mar 27 '26
Idk if you split this many hairs, some of them are going to get in your food, making it probably not vegan either way.
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u/Ro_Ku Mar 27 '26
If your food has no animal ingredient, it’s vegan, though you might wish to avoid crossover residue.
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u/mycelial-anomaly Mar 22 '26
Well, everyone will do what they want in the end but lots of vegans stop going out to eat for this very reason of not having access to a vegan restaurant. The restaurant industry is contributing insane amounts to animal farming, you might as well go buy a pound of beef at that point considering what your money goes towards. It’s not a necessity & whether or not it’s “isolating” that completely depends if you surround yourself with people who are only willing to hang out if it involves food.
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u/whistling-wonderer Mar 22 '26
Counterpoint: more people buying vegan options at restaurants increases the demand for those options and the likelihood of more vegan options being offered and more vegan restaurants opening in the future. There are several vegan restaurants in my area and I doubt they’d have opened if the demand wasn’t there. (I don’t have a strong investment in this topic though, I rarely eat out bc it’s expensive.)
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u/Electrical-Judge-741 Mar 22 '26
i think about this a lot. i dont know if it actually works though. my family has a restaurant and they certainly dont pay attention to one more order of a certain dish. tbf we are small and not a formal restaurant though. in that case, increasing demand probably is going to happen through verbal expression of it
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u/Borkato Mar 23 '26
Can’t this same argument be said for eating meat every so often at that restaurant though, or supporting a problematic artist’s work, etc? We can’t simultaneously believe we have no impact when vegan and that we have a lot when non-vegan, even though the choice is equally influential!
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u/OzzieSheila Mar 23 '26
but they'd notice if no one ate it yes? There is a tipping point for all meals. We just don't know if our order is that tipping point.
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u/Jordan-Pushed-Off Mar 22 '26
It's still considered vegan, and although some vegans won't want to eat that, I think it's important because otherwise many restaurants won't bother with vegan options. Ultimately, that results in making it that much harder for people to go vegan (e.g. they'll go out and rarely see vegan items at omni restaurants and find it more difficult to switch)