Have you heard about the VegNews scandal yet? If not, allow me to bring you up to speed. Apparently, VegNews, the so-called vegan magazine, has been tricking everyone by using non-vegan photographs of food to accompany their featured recipes. Some of their images have been taken from websites of stock photography and have been photo-shopped to make readers believe they are vegan. (Check out more of the details here and here)
Personally, I think it’s quite dishonorable of VegNews to do something like that. The people who read their magazine are people who deeply care about veganism and animal rights, so to dupe them into thinking that their photos are vegan is completely f***ed up. In the statement that was released yesterday, VegNews admitted using non-vegan photos, but only after “exhausting all options.” I don’t care if they’ve run out of other options, if they can’t take a picture of the actual recipe featured, then they shouldn’t bother to put a picture at all. I’d rather have a photo-less recipe than find out that those vegan ribs they’re advertising are actually real ribs from a slaughtered animal. Needless to say, VegNews has lost tons of subscriptions over this news. Serves them right.
The original intent of this post was to share a new, yummy muffin recipe with you. Please, excuse me for getting side tracked. I promise that the muffins in these pictures are 100% vegan, completely free of scandal and all animal products.
Triple Berry Spelt Muffins
1 cup spelt flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup non-dairy milk
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup canola oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/3 cups frozen mixed berries*
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line 12 muffin cups with paper or silicon liners.
- In a large bowl, sift the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together.
- In a smaller bowl, mix the milk, maple syrup, oil, and vanilla together.
- Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and stir until completely moistened. Stir in the frozen berries.
- Pour the batter into the prepared muffin cups. Bake for approximately 18-20 minutes, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
*Note: I used a mixture of frozen blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Feel free to use whatever berry combination you wish, though.
Yay for beautiful pictures of actual vegan food! Your muffins look delicious.
Beautiful muffs! Such a sad scandal. Ugh.
huzzha, Kiersten! your scandel-free triple berry spelt muffins look divine! i can’t wait for berry season here – i’ll have to deglutenize your recipe so i can enjoy it as well. they look wonderful!
it’s such a shame about VegNews. makes me really angryfaced, too. i just can’t believe #1. the use of those stockphotos & #2. their lack of apology. it’s so sad.
I’m so thoroughly exhausted by the VegNews thing… and completely depressed because not all of the photos are stock/fake- I shot all of the photos for my own articles, and typically 2 – 3 other recipe photos for other columns every issue.
Anyway… The muffins look great, and even better because they’re completely drama- and scandal-free. Food is much more delicious that way.
Who knew vegan muffins could actually look delicious!
All they needed to do was apologize and assure us that they won’t use meat pictures ever again. That’s all most of us wanted, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen at all. So sad