Well nothing’s “absolute” - there are a lot of grey areas. Refined sugar (often processed using bone char), processing agents like isinglass / egg white / animal enzymes, etc. It’s pretty hard to live a completely animal free existence, especially if you ever eat anything outside of your house.

I would definitely consider the possibility of small amounts of dairy / egg in processed fake meat products used by most asian vegetarian restaurants, and getting a straight answer about ingredients at these places is often going to be hard. I tend to not stress about it too too much when I’m eating somewhere that’s (otherwise) entirely vegetarian or vegan, but it’s worth keeping in mind.

(from my response to one of the posts linked in the main article) Avoiding the more processed fake meats (any fake chicken besides rehydrated soy protein or gluten, certain types of fake fish, fake shrimp, soy ham and chicken ham) will help.

I posted my comments yesterday at the bottom of the blogging.la link above… This is, of course, a problem, but I think the people who are making a stink about it (”Los Angeles Restaurants Exposed”) could be going about it a little more constructively.

Re: Luna Sol — Me too! Alegria has a couple good veggie dishes, but I miss Luna, esp. the xipotle bowl and soy tacos. I still run into some of the folks that worked there once in a while.

The owner of the bakery would lie to the customers, saying that there were dairy products in there, but no lard and that everything was made in the store. Of course there were tubs and tubs of premade frosting in the back made with lard.

I didn’t last very long there.

My guess is that it happens more often than we’d like.