By Julia Mathew, VRG Volunteer

I was recently in Sweden and Denmark. The vegan movement is growing so much in Denmark, especially in Copenhagen. A somewhat upscale Danish grocery chain, called Irma, now has a special vegan fridge section in the front of many of their stores. A 100% vegan Danish brand called “Naturli” recently went to the Natural Products Expo West conference in the U.S. and received a lot of attention there, including from Gwyneth Paltrow. Their products are doing very well in Denmark and are starting to be distributed to other European countries.  

Sweden is very ‘vegan-forward’ and most restaurants know they are behind the game if they don’t have any proper vegan options on their menu. Most regular grocery stores in Sweden have tons of vegan specialty products. Swedes love gummy candies and grocery stores usually have a bulk candy section, many of which clearly label “gelatin-free” on the box. The McVegan by McDonald’s was first introduced in Sweden and Finland, and is very popular there. There is another popular Swedish burger chain called Max Burger, which has a really nice vegan BBQ burger. They recently released a vegan milkshake and it has gotten excellent reviews. Their plan is to phase out their standard dairy-based milkshake so that in the future all of their milkshakes are vegan! The Swedish oat milk brand “Oatly” has been doing extremely well in Europe, and started being exported to US grocery stores and coffee shops. Just thought I’d share some exciting ‘vegan updates’ in Scandinavia.