Oreos are Vegan?!

So, I make this version of a curry chicken dinner that I got from my friend, Abby. It calls for cream of mushroom soup, mayonnaise, sour cream, and cheese, among other things. Due to some unfortunate malfunctions in this body of mine, I can't eat anything involving dairy or eggs. So I modified the hell out of her recipe to come up with something of my own that still basically tastes the same.

I have to make my own faux-cream of anything-but-mushroom soup because Jon is allergic to mushrooms and I can get around most of the ingredients by replacing them with their vegan counterparts--though I've yet to find soy sour cream anywhere in Southern Maine--except cheese. Fake cheese tastes fake no matter how tasty the package claims it is. Cheese is cheese. There is no replacement.

Last night, Jon was recruited to help me bang out this creation in record time because I needed to get to coursework and it takes an awfully long time to cook when you have to make your own soup from scratch. I told him to add a good sized portion of Vegenaise to the mix. After he adorably tried to fit a 1 cup sized measuring spoon into the two-inch jar opening but before he informed that according to his mom it's called a "heaping scoop" (thanks Jon's mom!), he asked me what is in Vegenaise anyway?

Jon hates mayonnaise. And I mean all things mayonnaise. Not because it isn't tasty, but because it's so bad for you. His question stopped me in my tracks. What is in Vegenaise? I had always assumed it must be healthy because it can only be made of vegetables or soy, right? We turned to the label and though all of the ingredients seem harmless enough, there seems to be an awful lot of poly and mono and trans fats in there for something so "natural." Of course, I looked it up.

The folks from Follow Your Heart (the people who produce the product in question), were kind enough to include a little Q & A on their website.

No MSG added. Excellent! I'm allergic to that too. No GMOs. Fantastic! We're an anti-GMO abode.

In response to, "I've heard that Canola Oil is bad for you. Why do you use it in your product?" Second paragraph, first sentence: "Much of the concern surrounding canola is because canola oil is mistakenly equated with rapeseed oil..."

Rapeseed oil?! Of course I have to look that up now, too. Thank you, Wiki, for explaining to me that rapeseed is not a Follow Your Heart typo, it's a legitimate thing.

Back to business. Vegenaise contains apple cider vinegar, that's good stuff. Annnnd finally, the last question they've answered: it contains no ingredients of animal origin.

Okay that sounds great but what else is in it? Is it just as bad as regular mayonnaise? Well according to an article that wiseGEEK wrote about it, it contains the same amount of calories and saturated fat as mayo. That can't be good for you. Maybe I'll tone it down on how often I dump a heaping scoop of the stuff into my curry chicken deliciousness. Orrrr maybe I'll just make it for dinner less often.

V-E-G-A-N doesn't spell "good for you." Case and point: Vegenaise. And Oreos.