This Vegan Chicken Samba is the reddish đź”´ little brother of the Vegan Chicken Curry
from the same brand. So in this review I will do some comparison between both.
As I wrote in the previous review, in Belgium, a lot of people eat a sandwich 🥪 or a garnished baguette 🥖 for lunch. The omnivore versions are often centered around chicken, tuna or minced beef salads in colours ranging from white over yellow to orange. The word salad simply means that the meat or fish chunks are drowned in a fatty mayonnaise-style spread. And truly, often you really have to search for something valuable in the too abundant and fatty sauces.
This vegan “chicken” spread version by Allos not only challenges the omnivore versions, but in my opinion beats them.
Taste/bite: As with the curry version, I had little expectations but tastewise, I was again pleasantly surprised. Here too, the taste is amazingly complex and multi-layered. Not too sweet, not too salt, with strong notes of #tomato (20%) and red bell #pepper (another 20%). The texture and “bite” of this #veganspread is undistinguishable from the similar omnivore version.
Ingredients: Organic. Gluten free. In this samba version, the majority of the #protein comes from soy: 20% of the ingredients is #smoked #tofu. But there’s also #chickpeas and #sunflower seeds amongst the ingredients. With 5,7 g of protein for a relatively liquid product this is comparable to the protein content of a thick #soy #yoghurt. Even if the taste is not excessively salted, this spread has also 1,25 g of salt per 100 g, not to be underestimated. But let’s say that a high salt level is a general flaw of processed foods, isn’t it? The complexity of the flavours is reflected in the large amount of #spices and vegetables used. Free from palm oil. #Rapeseed oil is used instead, which is an excellent choice from the nutritional point of view. The thickeners used are #guar gum, #carob gum and #corn starch However, just as with the curry version, there’s also almost 7 g of #sugar per 100 g of product, in great part due to the addition of #canesugar. The addition of sugar is another flaw of modern processed foods. The engineers of food flavouring know that when they add both salt and sugar in the right proportion, it will make us eat more and crave more. And thus, they fuel the world’s obesity epidemic.
Shape/Conditioning: Small size conditioning in a 165 g glass jar. This would allow you to cover one single baguette max. Marketed and labelled as vegan.
Price: I paid 3,89 € (September 2023). Relatively expensive for this size/amount. But it would be very costly to recreate a similar product at home with the wide variety of spices and ingredients used. Unless you simplify, of course, something I tend to do.
Still, a great vegan success 🏆 if we measure this success in meeting and surpassing the quality and standards of otherwise mediocre mainstream omnivore versions of this type of spreads by copying. Although I would not buy this product again myself. I do not think it’s a nutritional success.
The brand is German. They have a large offer of vegan spreads, with new items being added regularly.
www.allos.de
#vegansuccess #veganpower #veganinbrussels #brusselsvegan #veganinbelgium #veganbelgium #veganfortheanimals #veganforhealth #veganfortheplanet #veganforever #veganisnotscary
