Emma Jarvis
Eating our way through Oslo Vegetarfestival!
Eating our way through Oslo Vegetarfestival!
Mon Roca
LOCO, the new Scandinavian revolution

LOCO is a project launching a concept-store that has become every vegan’s dream: an 100% plant based grocery chain in Scandinavia. The first store will be opened in Oslo in 2021, and if all goes according to plan (fingers crossed!) the rest of Scandinavia will follow in the upcoming years.

Mon Roca
New Mexican plant focused restaurant in the city

Vaquera Verde is a new Mexican inspired vegetarian & vegan restaurant in St. Hanshaugen, and two members of the Vegan Norway team were invited to test their tasting menu.

Mon Roca
When are plant-based meat alternatives a smart ...

In Norway there are over ten brands that make several plant-based meat alternatives. Among them we find burgers, mince, sausages, nuggets, and veggieballs. This is ideal for anyone that wants to reduce meat consumption or quit animal products.

Mon Roca
New Naturli Café: Here’s Why You Will Love It ...

Last month Naturli opened its first plant-based café in Oslo. Located in Skøyen -it’s extremely easy to get there by public transport-, all their meals are made with their own products. They are open 7-17 (10-16) and the menu includes smoothie bowls, salad bowls and burgers.

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Trondheim Vegan Fair

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Trondheim Vegan Fair

Trondheim is a city I have always wanted to visit. It's the capital of the north of Norway and home to the awesome Nidaros cathedral, amazing jazz festivals, the wharves, and charming Bakklandet. Trondheim is full of students, technology, cycling, music and food. This makes it a super vibrant city, and exploring it as a vegan is way easier than you might expect. From pizza restaurants (yes with vegan cheese on the pizzas) to sushi places to 100% vegan cafes, Trondheim has everything my little vegan heart could possibly want.

I was over the moon when I was asked to come to Trondheim to hold a talk at Trondheim Vegan Fair by Emma Jarvis, the festivals organiser. It's an annual event which attracts a lot of people. As well as a bunch of interesting stalls they also have talks, workshops, a fashion show, various cooking courses, a cinema zone and loads of activities for children. It caters to everyone basically! 

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Veganism on a Student Budget

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Veganism on a Student Budget

A common misconception about veganism is that it is so expensive. We recently picked tackled some of the concerns and issues surrounding  this in our latest blog post: Is veganism only for the rich? It can be expensive to be vegan, sure. But it is totally possible to do veganism on a budget. To give you a real life, down to earth perspective on a cheap vegan life we asked two members of our team, Arja Sivapiragasam and Mariel Melø Hansen to tell us how they do it. You might find yourself picking up some great hints and tips on how to save money and have a great time as a student whilst simultaneously saving animals lives.

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Vegan Sneakers from Nike

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Vegan Sneakers from Nike

 

I was saddened to read on a website called Vegan Kicks that they didn't class Nike as a vegan brand any more as they no longer specified on their website which trainers did not use animal glue any more (they used to have a specific list online of which trainers did. 

I gave up on my Nike dreams and have found happiness in my Asics Gel Lyte trainers. Asics are widely known not to use animal products in their glue so their synthetic trainers were a good choice for me, as they look quite cool.

However, I'll always hold a torch for Nike. I didn't give up and kept badgering them and doing research. Last night I found a great group of German vegan sneaker enthusiasts called Vegan Sneaker Connection. They're a great group of people who are doing lots of research into the big sneaker brands to see which products are vegan. I was surprised to read that they were adamant that synthetic trainers from Nike were vegan. 

Excitedly I asked them if they would share the email they had from Nike which confirmed that the glue used on the trainers did not include animal products. They copied the text from the email and sent me two screenshots which prove it is from Nike and that it is from November 2015.

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ASIA Aker Brygge

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ASIA Aker Brygge

ASIA is planning to release a new separate menu containing vegetarian and vegan dishes on the 7th of October. The current set of dishes on the menu is actually easy to veganize, because they are vegan from the ground up, with fish or meat added afterwards to reach a wider audience. If you go to the restaurant today you will be able to order vegan versions of many of their dishes. Just tell the waiter, and they will help you.

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Eat For Compassion

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Eat For Compassion

It’s been a few months since the release of the Vegan Oslo app on android phones and our big release party we called ‘Eat For Compassion’. I was having a coffee today and just reminiscing on how much of a great time we all had and I thought that I should write a blog post to celebrate it again and let everyone who couldn’t be there know what it was like! Eat For Compassion took place on the 17th May 2015; a one day vegan festival organised by Norsk vegansamfunn and us to celebrate restaurant day (read more about what restaurant day is here) and the launch of Vegan Oslo on Android phones (get it now for FREE!). There was so many activities crammed into that day it will be hard for us to remember them all but here goes...

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Adopt an animal

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Adopt an animal

I first heard about Kattensvern at Dyreverndagen a few months ago. I heard a great talk by Jeanette Laxdal, one of the main people in the organisation. She has been working there since 2010, helping to find homes for many cats, fighting to get animal police in Bergen and spreading knowledge about how to look after cats conscientiously.

Since Kattensvern started in 2004 they have rehomed more than 3000 cats in Bergen and have worked outside of this to improve cats welfare and change common attitudes towards caring for pets for the better. As well as their rescue center they also have a shop in the city center and also conduct awareness-raising activities. There are a few excellent people that volunteer their time to take care of the cats and run the shop.

In Norway people often have a very old fashioned concept of what animals needs are, they think that is natural to not neuter the cat and let it live in the barn and hunt for its dinner. But the reality is that moden felines are just not equipped to be born into that type of lifestyle and all homeless cats in Norway need human help to survive, whether they're domestic cats, or so-called "wild cats".

The mission of Kattensvern is to find homes for homeless cats, work to sterilise/castrate cats (helping combat homeless kitties being brought into the world), to make sure that cats get proper medical care and vaccinations, to care for the cats that are currently homeless, to spread attitude enhancing information in the media, and to cooperate with animal welfare associations in Norway and abroad.

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IKEA goes vegan

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IKEA goes vegan

We in Vegan Oslo, together with several others from NOAH - for dyrs rettigheter, Norsk vegansamfunn, Veggispreik and more, were lucky to get invited this Friday to taste the new “grønnsaksboller” (vegetable balls) IKEA are launching.

IKEA is betting big - with their 800 million customers each year they expect to sell a 100 million tons of these new vegetable balls a year, which is a third of what they currently sell of the world famous IKEA meatballs.

The new focus on these vegetable balls are the result of an interest in the environment and animal welfare. They want to get more people to eat sustainable and cruelty free food, with the largest focus on sustainability. WWF reports (1) that if we continue to eat like we do today, we’re going to need 3 earths to feed the world's population by 2050.