PETA’s Vegan Food Awards have been running for over 10 years, and the winners get more exciting, innovative, and insanely delicious with each passing year.
As the market for plant-based food grows, it becomes increasingly harder to narrow down PETA’s top picks. However, the 2023 winners are sure to excite vegans and win over the not-yet-vegan crowd!
Best Vegan Milk
Marks & Spencer Chilled British Oat Drink
Replicating the style of cows’ milk cartons, M&S’ new creamy plant milk is oat-rageously good.
Best Vegan Chicken
VFC Chick*n Stompers
After grabbing a winning title in 2021, the VFC heroes have done it again. Children don’t want to eat birds, so young vegans are going to love finding these stompers on their plates.
Best Vegan Burger
THIS Isn’t Beef Burgers
If you love burgers, you’ll love this. The new and improved recipe looks and cooks like a beef burger but with 30% less saturated fat and a fraction of the carbon footprint. This is the future.
Best Vegan Meat
Redefine Meat Beef Flank
This succulent and revolutionary 3D-printed vegan steak is a cut above! Adored by chefs including Aidan Fisher, head chef at Bristol’s Square Club, who noted its remarkable flavour and texture, and Marco Pierre White, who called it “the cleverest thing I’ve seen in almost 40 years in the kitchen”. We say it’s delicious.
Best Vegan Cheese
Honestly Tasty Blue
This sensational cheese is carefully matured and fermented from pea and fava bean protein and delivers a smooth, creamy blue cheese flavour. It is available at M&S and Ocado as well as 650 Holland & Barrett stores under its own label.
Best Vegan Seafood
Squeaky Bean Beechwood Smoked Salmon Style Slices
These slices are cooked and ready to layer on a bagel with dairy-free cream cheese or some fish-friendly sushi. It’s sustainable, versatile, and delicious.
Best Vegan Egg
Sacred Grounds Poached ‘Egg’
Exeter’s clever and creative restaurateurs spent months cracking the recipe for this perfect vegan poached egg, made from a careful mix of silken tofu, turmeric, and pure kitchen wizardry. It’s a popular choice at this all-vegan restaurant – and for good reason.
Best Vegan Sausage
Plant Menu Ultimate No Pork Sausages
These meaty, juicy sausages from Aldi’s own brand impress with their salty, crisp skin – perfect for your next bangers and mash meal.
Best Vegan Pie or Pasty
Greggs Vegan Mexican Chicken-Free Bake
A grab-and-go option featuring vegan chicken pieces from THIS, mixed vegetables, and Mexican-style tomato sauce, all packed into a crispy pastry topped with a cheese-flavour crumb. It’s also available from Iceland, so stock up!
Best Vegan Pizza
Dr. Oetker Ristorante Vegan Pepperoni-Salame
The Ristorante classic Italian-style pizza with vegan mozzarella and pepperoni is for the thin-and-crispy pizza–lovers out there. Available at Tesco to fill your freezer.
Best Vegan Croissant
Lovely Rita’s Bakehouse Pistachio Croissant
Sheffield-based Lovely Rita’s Bakehouse is a 100% vegan bakery making plant-based pastries and sourdough loaves by hand. It’s hard to choose from the wide selection of cinnamon swirls, almond croissants, miso caramel cruffins, and more, but its bestselling pistachio cream–filled croissant is our top pick.
Best Vegan Pastry
Tart Modern Vegan Classic Nata
The popular Portuguese custard tart has been made vegan by Tart Modern! Haven’t seen ’em? That’s because these totally irresistible artisan vegan natas are only available from Tart Modern’s kiosk in Baker Street tube station – delicious and exclusive.
Best Vegan Dessert
itsu chocolate bao’ buns
These steamed bao buns – oozing with molten chocolate and ready in minutes – are full of wao. You can pick up a pack at Tesco, Ocado, and dozens of Heavenly Desserts locations around the UK.
Best Vegan Ice Cream
Doughlicious Chocolate Chip Dough.Chi
Ingenious and indulgent, Doughlicious wraps balls of ice cream in cookie dough before coating each piece in chocolate chip cookie crumbs. We can understand why this is its bestselling product.
Best Vegan Chocolate
Ritter Sport Smooth Chocolate
Mild, creamy, and rich – Ritter Sport isn’t lying when it says, “A lot of WOW! but without cow”.
Best Vegan Luxury Product
Biscuit Boutique Speculoos BiscuitsWith their stunning designs, these vegan biscuits are almost too beautiful to eat, but they’re too delicious to resist. We’ll be keeping these in mind for Secret Santa.
Most Innovative Vegan Product
Juicy Marbles Bone-In Ribs
Slovenian company Juicy Marbles has created these succulent, hands-on plant-based ribs with the world’s first edible vegan bones. Soak in your favourite marinade and bake to perfection – this is vegan meat for meat-lovers. They are currently only available from the company’s online store but so worth it.
Best Vegan Ad Campaign
Flora Plant ‘Skip the Cow’
Highlighting the absurdity of running plants through a cow, Flora Plant’s tongue-in-cheek adverts are funny and thought-provoking. Check out its clever TV advert here.
Best Vegan Range
ASDA OMV!
ASDA’s extensive new vegan range has something for everyone, from a No Prawn Cocktail sandwich to Savoury Mini No Eggs and salted caramel hot chocolate.
Best Vegan Breakfast
Premier Inn
You can rest easy knowing you’ll have a hearty breakfast at Premier Inn. In a single year, the hotel chain serves up 2.5 million vegan sausages and 1 million THIS Isn’t Bacon rashers. he breakfast offerings also include grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, crumpets, toast, and other beloved staples to start your day right.
Best Vegan Cookbook
Philip Khoury A New Way to Bake
This astonishing book from Harrods’ head pastry chef features classic patisserie and baking recipes done completely free from dairy and eggs. The book breaks the recipes down into easy-to-follow steps that will have you whipping up show-stopping cakes, bakes, and pastries like a pro.
Today’s meat, egg, dairy, and fishing industries put animals through hell. Piglets’ tails may be docked without painkillers, chickens’ throats are slit while they’re still conscious, cows are forcibly separated from their beloved calves, and fish are cut open while they’re still alive.
Vegan foods have a smaller carbon footprint than animal-derived foods, as animal agriculture is a leading producer of the greenhouse gases that contribute to the climate catastrophe. Eating vegan also lowers a person’s risk of developing heart disease and cancer.
Once you’ve tasted these award-winning vegan options, you’ll never look back.
