Bagel Rant

(from July 22, 2007)

I recently bought a bag of bagels from a legendary Montreal bagel bakery which will remain nameless. Martin is extremely allergic to soy, so we are very careful to check the ingredients on everything we buy. On this particular bag of poppyseed bagels, it lists 3 possible types of bagels that are sold by this company, and their respective ingredients. The first type listed was sesame or poppyseed, stating that the oil used is canola. The other 2 types were whole wheat and raisin cinnamon, both stating that they contain "vegetable oil". Now, not many people know this, but "vegetable oil" almost always means full or partial SOYBEAN OIL! Poor Martin had a terrible reaction to the bagel, even though it was poppyseed and the listed ingredient was canola oil. So I phoned up the bakery to ask (politely at that) if there were any types of bagels guaranteed not to have soybean oil, so I would know which bagels to buy from them in the future. The guy on the phone there said "no ma'am, we don't use soy, it's vegetable oil" I said "yes I know, but usually that means soybean oil" again, not listening but getting impatient, he said louder "ma'am it's vegetable oil", as if I'm the ignorant one. I asked what it said on the bottle. He said "I can't answer that question ma'am, you'll have to call back tomorrow morning," and just hung up. And this establishment is renown for its customer service??! He was so rude, and wasn't even willing to look at the ingredients on the bottle of oil, at which point he would have realized that I was asking a perfectly legitimate question. Big companies who mass market processed food always use soy in everything because it is the cheapest and easiest source of protein and oil for large-scale food production; I would expect that kind of response from one of them, but from a friendly local bakery? WTF?
Soy allergies are a lot more common than people may think, and it's a really nasty one because as I mentioned earlier, there's freakin' soy in in EVERYTHING! Canned soup, pasta sauce, bread, sausages, cookies, chocolate bars, even some HERBAL TEA, for crying out loud. And sometimes it only says "vegetable oil" -- buyer beware. We've had to resort to making a lot of our own food at home, old-school. (which isn't so bad, but it's quite time-consuming). When we do go out to buy food, we feel that we have a right to know what is in it, ESPECIALLY when there is a risk of a serious allergic reaction.
Aside from the usual benefits of buying from a small local business, one of the main reasons we do is because they generally don't use the same cheapo industrial methods as the big guys do, and that usually means they use sane ingredients without a million soy products in them. I can't believe I was treated this way by a local community establishment who relies on their mutual rapport with Montreal residents to survive. I will no longer be purchasing bagels from this aforementioned famous nameless Montreal bagel bakery; I am however more than happy to support their longtime rival down the street!