Struggles of a Vegan Living Abroad – Englishmen in Denmark

Guest Post From Vegan Method

I’m an English man, I moved to Denmark around three and a half years ago and was omnivore at the time, due to what I perceived as a serious health scare I changed my food preferences, first to pescatarian, I felt it was healthy and then after the worst seafood pizza I have ever eaten left me toilet bound for half a night – I started researching veganism, which then changed my whole world.

I have been recreationally lifting heavy objects in the gym for over ten years and in decent shape for my age, externally.

Internally I couldn’t be sure, a couple of months before Turkey I had a heart attack, to me that’s what it was, it had all the symptoms but eventually it was diagnosed  as IBS with a panic attack, it scared the shit out of me whatever it was.

The research started, I watched “Game Changers” on the plane back from Turkey, it sang to me, from the minute I landed I was vegan, no doubts in my mind. I am an athlete and I deserve the fuel of an athlete, albeit a 40 year old vegan virgin of an athlete who has a minor cardio allergy..

The next day I cleared all my animal product laden foods in to bags and gave it all away at work, nothing got past me …well nothing I could read.  

I had English food that I had brought over like Marmite, Marmite’s vegan, it says so on the jar, all actual meat, milk and cheese was not, so in the bag it goes, I coupled this with watching “what the health”, “Cowspiracy” and a few more documentaries to solidify my understanding, animals deserved better, I’m not eating them now for ethical reasons too.

This is where life first got tricky as a vegan, checking labels is pretty easy… in English, most of my soups, sauces, granules, ready meals, snacks and sweets are in Danish. I translated some of the words like milk, wow a lot of food has mælk in it so that was another bag I could start filling. All the mints and chewing gum went too as I wasn’t sure, along with a lot of the sauces and soups. In fact most of the food that wasn’t vegetables were gone, I needed to go shopping!

That night I had a couple of hours spare, armed with a shopping list of replacements for the items I had given away and wanted some extra fruit and vegetables because if I failed, well I needed a plan B.  

I went to a shop called Bilka, this is the plant based supermarket award winning hypermarket that sells everything, I’d been many times as a non-vegan but this time it was obviously a different mission and the medal winning shop needed to prove to me it’s accomplishment was well deserved.

I walked every aisle looking like an alien who had never seen food before, staring at bottles, cans and jars, taking in each word I didn’t recognize and seeing if it sounded like English words, and where needed using my translate app. There wasn’t many labels saying vegan, I was starting to panic so decided to cheat and filled half my basket with fruit, vegetables, peanut butter and some rice cakes – I wouldn’t be going hungry. 

After the fresh foods I thought to look in the meat fridges to remind myself what I’m doing this for and to my delight I found a vegan fridge next to it. Well almost, it had ovo-vegetarian and vegetarian marked foods, but also tofu, seiten, plant based burgers, sausages, one pizza and falafel, I was saved!

That night I ate burgers and fries, yes not very healthy but had to start somewhere.

Two years on and I’m still struggling to find vegan options, somehow Bilka has won the same award every year since, they removed the vegan fridges which were often empty or broken and now the animal free products are spread out so I have to hunt for my food.

My diet is pretty good but variety isn’t high, there’s 2 burgers, two types of sausage, three falafel options, so it’s forced me to eat fresher, more raw, more nutrient dense foods and honestly I’m glad for it. I do get jealous seeing all the options back home in the UK and wish the shops here could catch up a bit.

Eating out is also a fresh hell! Some places and people do not understand what my choice is. You can order a vegan burger meal and be offered extra cheese, declining the extra cheese you have to ask to remove the standard cheese it comes with and then if you are lucky, if …  you might get a mayonnaise free burger. So far I’ve had four meals with cheese or mayo after explicitly saying not to put mayo in. I’ve also boycotted one of the burger chains for putting bacon in my vegan salad, it’s tiring but you know, for the animals.

I do fight to educate the servers or managers of the restaurants and have had one minor success, a local Italian restaurant has added vegan options on their menu after I sent messages on Instagram and then went in to eat,  their vegan pizza is amazing, artichoke sauce instead of cheese.

I’m working on a second pizza place, because I’m not the only vegan here and I told them their closest rivals now have vegan options.

In fairness there are a couple of vegan only places as well, but it’s a 45 minutes drive to the closest and some places do get it, but you have to plan well in advance and it’s easier if I take a Danish person with me, I pay, they order, this means I know the communication is perfect.

So if you ever thought being vegan was complicated, please remember the ex-pats that are in some far off land, well not so far for me. Everyone speaks English but it’s still a nightmare to just do basics, like shopping, eating out and joining any functions at work. Like lunch, there is a choice of pork or fish or some salad, so I take my own meals every day, adapt to survive is a vegans greatest skill…