I am someone who is lucky (and privileged) to live by a couple great grocery stores and have easy access to good food. This is not something that was true when I was younger. I did not know it at the time but I lived in what they call a “food desert” now, meaning it was difficult to get to healthy foods for my family. The store closest to us was over 5 miles away, and we did not have a car for a long time. The transit service that was available we had to walk over a mile to reach, and it ran infrequently. In the unrelenting heat of Texas, you can imagine this was not a great way to have to live, and my story is not unique. The store was a chain and marketed all the prepackaged, advertised foods that we are all familiar with, and that was also what was on sale normally, not fresh fruits and vegetables. As such, much of my childhood was based in canned foods and processed goods since that was what the store had that was affordable. Add in that we bought large quantities to store for the large family I belonged to, well... healthy eating was not on the menu. And what’s worse is that this is what we believed was supposed to be normal.
Things seem to be starting to change even if our relationship with food is still not great. Plus when life is busy it can be hard to want to expend the energy to also think too much about where to shop and what to get, so convenience is a necessity for many people and so is affordability. Love them or hate them, this is where big box stores come in and are often the only places some people grocery shop.
One place in Minnesota that has grown its grocery business significantly over the last ten years is Target. They’ve expanded what they carry that is vegan by a large margin as well. I would imagine that, store-by-store, this is going to be a bit different because they did offer up local brands of items here in the Twin Cities. But this is a picture-heavy post to give you some ideas of what you can look for that is vegan at Target. Local things, lunches, snacks, dinners, basics, and yes… some treats.
Front and center at Target is produce and it included some regional items. I am not going to post a ton of photos of this because obviously fruit and vegetables are vegan:
I was glad to find tofu there as it as good foundation food for vegans and people who don't want to eat meat all the time:
A lot of the Target brand bread was vegan. Not all, as some had eggs and milk, but still a fair amount, including dinner rolls (very hard to find at the holidays):
For on your bread:
Plenty of hummus including local favorite Holy Land and their own line:
There is the biggest selection of non-diary milk I've seen anywhere, and some easy breakfast stuff (besides cereal, which is plentiful):
Road trip (and work) snacks abound. Though please... for the planet, recycle the packaging as they are not exactly earth friendly. But I know that snacks are the best.
One thing I used to run into back when I was microwaving my work lunches a lot was that the sodium content was really high. These aren't the best they can be, compared to fresh food, but they are better and Target has a lot of easy lunch stuff (some are clearly marked as Vegan):
Some helpful dinner basics ideas:
Mayo, crackers, treats, including Target's own brand of cookies, crackers, as well as Haagen-Dazs Vegan ice cream:
This is just some of what they have, to give you an idea what to look for. There are also many cereals, chips, juices, fruit leathers, grain based lunches, etc... There are Targets nearly everywhere you go around Minnesota, so getting to vegan food should be a little easier. I hope this is a trend that continues and I will update this in the future as the seasons change. Thank you for reading!