Make your own vegan fast food (and avoid McDonald’s!)

Of course there are lots of other types of fast food (fish and chips, kebabs etc) which are covered in other posts on this site. For this one, we’re focusing on traditional American-style fast food (burgers, hot dogs, milk shakes etc).

Vegan hot dogs (The Veg Space) are easy to make. Go to  town with fried onions, vegan cheese, gherkins and saurkraut.

Fast food may be delicious, but the big chains do terrible harm to animals and damage to the planet. Plus to your waist line and likely your heart.

But the mad thing is that none of this need happen. It’s really easy to replicate all your favourite flavours from cheeseburgers to milkshakes.

In this post we’ll look at how to do just that. Plus a London vegan fast food chain. And why McDonald’s is not as successful as you may think.

• Avoid chips and sausages for young children and people at risk of choking. Read more on food safety for people and pets.
• Before recycling cans, rinse then remove lids (pop ring-pulls over holes). Then step on upper cans to ‘pinch’ inner rims together, to avoid wildlife getting trapped. 
• Unless you have a food waste bin, bin pepper and allium scraps (onion, leeks, garlic, shallots, chives) and citrus/tomato/rhubarb scraps, as acids could harm compost creatures. 

Why make your own vegan fast food?

Three words – animals, taste and cholesterol. None of the big fast food chains are using free-range animals (perhaps eggs but even the hens are killed at end of laying lives). Homemade fast food not only tastes better and is cheaper, but all plant foods are cholesterol-free.

So the good news means that if you want to live on a diet of cheeseburgers, fries and milkshakes – you kind of can – as long as you bake the fries and have some salad alongside. It still is quite a healthy diet if you do it right.

Choose some good ‘base ingredients’

Being realistic in that you likely are not going to make your own burgers and sausages, take time to find good brands. Moving Mountains is sold in easy-to-recycle packaging. It offers burgers and hot dog sausages that cook up in minutes, as the ‘base’ for your vegan food food.

How to make a homemade vegan cheeseburger!

Madeleine Olivia

Easier than you’d think! Thee Burger Dude (who wrote the book below) began eating them 40 years after they were invented, and became an addict. But says now he has not only equalled but improved the recipe!

The secret is in the sauce. Liv B’s vegan Big Mac sauce replicates it exactly. You can then just pour this on your vegan burger with bun, salad and onions etc, for the same result. Only 8 ingredients.

Make your own (vegan) mylk shakes

Everyone loves milkshakes. But rather than make dairy ones with chemical flavours, learn to make your own. Simple, delicious and nutritious!

Try this Strawberry shake (The Simple Veganista).

McDonald’s McFlurry is packed with dairy and sugar (the same as several cans of soda). And expensive (almost £3 or £3.59 for delivery apps). Many toppings (like Oreo) contain palm oil.

This chocolate shake is another alternative.

Avoid caffeine for pregnancy/nursing.

If you don’t want a recipe, it’s really easy to just eye-ball:

• Blend 2 cups of vegan vanilla ice-cream and 1/2 cup of plant milk in a blender until smooth and creamy. Thin out with plant milk if too thick.
• Then just add flavours (fresh strawberries or Sweet Freedom chocolate syrup or Meridian palm-oil-free peanut butter).
• Pour into a milkshake glass and top with whipped coconut cream.

A vegan fast food book by a former addict!

Vegan Fast Food is a super book by an American, who loves fast food. But when he went vegan, he had to relearn how to make his favourite meals. He now runs an uber-popular blog, and this is his first recipe book.

Recipes include:

• Burgers and fries
• Fried ‘chicken’ wings and nuggets
• Filet O Fish
• Hash browns
• Mcmuffin
• Domino’s pan pizza
• Meatball subs
• Tacos and burritos
• Vegan milkshakes
• Apple pie (don’t burn your mouth!)

Unity Diner (London fast food to help animals!)

Unity Diner is a smashing fast food join in London that offers up vegan burgers and hot dogs, plus other plant-based food like kebabs and ‘fish and chips’. Note this is on weekdays, at weekends it’s a vegan carvery.

Located in Spitalfields, nearest tube stops are Aldgate East and Liverpool East (just a few minutes walk away).

The menu includes:

• New York hot dog
• BBQ vegan bacon burger
• Lobster sub
• Loaded fries
• Kids cheeseburger
• Raspberry thick shake

All profits help support its own Surge Sanctuary. You can also buy bales of hay by setting the sanctuary as your choice at easyfundraising. Anytime you buy a product or service from participating retailers, a percentage goes to them at no cost to you.

Like most vegan food food joints, it’s cashless (due to bank notes containing animal fats – and plastic).

It’s even recently launched Unity Döner, a vegan kebab rotisserie, also available to hire out for trailers and festivals!

Not Lovin’ It (English towns without McDonald’s)

Mint Sprinkle

For many years, it seemed that there was hardly a town in England, without a branch of the American fast food chain Mcdonald’s (the first one only opened in England, a few decades ago).

But today (despite the TV ads), sales are rapidly falling (and costs are rising, as franchises can’t sell cheap cheeseburgers and make a profit at the same time). And as people increasingly question the ethics of rainforest beef and ‘happy cows’ to make burgers and shakes, people are making their own food.

Abroad, Mcdonald’s serves some fries in chip fat (pollock is also becoming endangered, use in Filet O Fish). In England, KFC serves its fries in animal fat, and Burger King’s plant-based whoppers are cooked on the same grills as meat.

Recently, both McDonald’s and KFC went back on commitments on chicken welfare, refusing to buy slow-growing chickens (fast-growing ones end up with painful deformities, for more profit). 

Councils increasingly saying ‘no’ to fast food chains

Many councils are also growing backbones, refusing planning permission to new outlets, due to concerns over litter and child obesity.

It’s interesting that the last couple of refusals have been on environmental grounds. In Tice Meadows (Surrey) an appeal was dismissed after 10,000 people signed a petition due to countryside concerns.

And in Bracknell, the inspector refused, as the proposed outlet would require removing protected trees. The response that the company would ‘replant trees to replace the ones that would be cut down’ didn’t wash.

The trees that McDonald’s would have felled were 3 Italian alders, 2 protected mature willow trees and 1 sweet gum.

But it has not given up. It now has come back with a new proposal. It still proposes to cut down the trees above, but replace them with 20 new trees and add a second customer service point.

Hopefully the same planning officer will be on duty that day.

Towns in England with no McDonald’s

Tavistock (Devon) is full of farmer’s markets and known as a ‘foodie place’. A few years back, it became the first place where the local branch of McDonald’s had to close down and move staff to Plymouth.

One local said ‘We feed our children properly here, so they had no customers’.

Ludlow (Shropshire) is another little foodie town, with weekly markets, local bakeries and independenet delis. Again the local food here is so good, no-one would dream of ordering a fast food takeaway.

Ludlow is known for its medieval streets (the 11th century castle was once capital of Wales). Poet Sir John Betjeman once described this place as ‘the loveliest town in England’ (he also adored Sidmouth).

Others sizable towns without a branch of McDonald’s in England include:

Countries with no McDonald’s

There are quite a few countries on earth that don’t have McDonald’s. Not just North Korea, but also Jamaica and Bermuda (burgers are ‘not a thing’ here).

And Iceland (due to being an island out in the middle of nowhere, people tend to eat local food, as imports would be too expensive).

Why does Vatican City rent land to McDonald’s?

Unbelievably, one place that rents land for a McDonald’s (for around 30,000 Euros a month) is Vatican City. What would St Francis of Assisi (the patron saint of ecology and animals) say?

There were huge protests when the deal was done a few years ago, but the project went ahead anyway. So now one of the world’s richest religions is taking money from a company that tortures animals and tears down rainforests, in order to serve junk food to Italians.

And people wonder why church donations are falling.