When columns of smoke rise every few meters, it’s grilling season. Then the steak, sausage and corn on the cob are put on the grill, the salad is layered and the beer bench set is set up. In Germany, grilling is almost a cultural asset. According to a barbecue study, one in four people in Germany do it at least once a week, around 40 percent do it every two weeks and another quarter do it at least once a month.
Neck steak and Thuringian steak are now increasingly being replaced by their plant-based brothers on the grill. Can the quality of highly processed foods keep up with the growing popularity? Ökotest tested 19 vegan grilled sausages and subjected them to both a laboratory test and a sensory test. What the products offer consumers is not a brilliant performance. On the contrary: the testers do not want to give a purchase recommendation for almost two thirds of the plant-based alternatives.
Sausages yes, but vegan please? There are still more meatless alternatives available now. However, the quality often seems to leave a lot to be desired. According to Ökotest, the test results for grilled sausages are sometimes disappointing. Only the “Ener Bio Tofu Sausages” from Rossmann perform “very well”. At least six more are good.
Once again it shows that the organic label alone is not an indication that the product is really top. Three organic brands performed so poorly that they failed the test. According to Ökotest’s opinion, the Denree vegan sausages and Albert’s lupine grilled sausage, among others, are far too heavily contaminated with mineral oil components and are therefore both “insufficient”. The sausages “Gutfried Wie Bratwurst” also contain increased amounts of chlorate and are also “insufficient”. The testers were also disappointed with the vegan grilled sausages from Rügenwalder Mühle and the Organic Company Seitan sausages. According to Ökotest, both products are “defective” and do not pass the test.
You can find the entire test report here.