Germany: Vegetarian Food

Germany: Vegetarian Food
There is at least one vegetarian restaurant or partially vegetarian restaurant in most of the German cities I have visited over the past few years (Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Mannheim). However, despite its high profile political Green movement, and public concern for 'organic' food, Germany is not blessed with a wealth of vegetarian restaurants. Neither have I noticed much German supermarket food being labelled as suitable for vegetarians. However, health food shops, and shops selling organic food, are, in my experience, not hard to locate, making vegetarian picnic food relatively easy to obtain. Open markets, such as are found all over Italy, are not apparently where German people buy fruit and vegetables.



The bad news is that much traditional German food is heavily based on slaughtered animals and on animal products. As in Britain, many people in Germany appear to find it strange to want to avoid eating dead animals. Unlike in Italy (where olive oil is used), the fat in which German food is cooked may well originate from rendered animal flesh. This latter point is significant, for in Berlin I experienced difficulty in a non-vegetarian restaurant because the chef, although willing to prepare something meat-free, could not guarantee that the oil used for frying was suitable for vegetarians.
In many hotels, a buffet breakfast consists of slices of processed dairy cheese, slices of pig, slices of squashed animals, and chickens' eggs in one form or another. There might also be breakfast cereal served with cow's milk, dairy yoghurt and kwark.

from - http://www.btinternet.com/~p.g.h/germany_vegetarian.htm