‘Nobody was waiting for a vegan b****y sausage, you PC-ravaged clowns!’ 

So said the infamous tweet from Piers Morgan, reacting to the news back in January 2019 that high street bakery Greggs was launching a ‘plant-based’ sausage roll.

He couldn’t have been more wrong. The Quorn-and-puff- pastry offering quickly became one of Greggs’ bestsellers, responsible for a 14 per cent rise in profits that year.

It was also an important moment. 

Until then, fake meat products were fairly niche – The Mail on Sunday was among the first to report on the new wave of vegan ‘beef’ burgers that looked, smelled, tasted, and even ‘bled’ like the real thing, but were made from soya or pea protein textured mince.

They were indeed plant-based but, as one writer said, as natural as Dulux emulsion. Despite this, they’ve been unfailingly popular. 

Greggs Bakery, located in Newcastle and with over 2,000 locations, thought a vegan option was bold. The move paid off and was followed by a number of other copycats.

Three percent of Britons are vegans, meaning they don’t eat meat or dairy. More than three quarters of Britons claim they want to reduce their consumption of meat and dairy in order to be healthier. These foods can help them. 

Is a vegan sausage roll better than the original? No. 

Each contains half a teaspoon of salt – a third of the daily recommended limit – and more fat than a Big Mac.

Last week, perhaps hoping to repeat the success of the vegan sausage roll, Greggs unveiled the Vegan Festive Bake – a fake meat version of its ‘much loved’ Festive Bake. Twitter split.

The Mail on Sunday's Health editors Eve Simmons (left) and Barney Calman try out the new Greggs Vegan Christmas Bake at a store in Fulham

Eve Simmons and Barney Calman, editors of The Mail on Saturday’s Health try the Greggs Vegan Christmas Bake from a Fulham store

‘Finally tried the Vegan Festive bake and [Greggs] have only gone and absolutely smashed it out the park,’ wrote Paul, a Geordie in London. Others disagree.

‘The Greggs Vegan Festive Bake is absolutely rank. Ruined my day,’ complained Kiera from Liverpool.

On Friday, The Mail on Sunday’s Deputy Health Editor Eve Simmons and I went to a local branch to give our verdict on the taste – and to look into whether you’re doing your health a favour by eating one.

I’m vegetarian and, I have to admit, I’m a bit of a fan of the vegan sausage roll. 

Warm sausage rolls have that same flaky, chewy texture that real sausage rolls. (Cold, it’s a bit wooden, sadly.) 

Greggs baked goods are a favorite. 

All of them follow the same format. A square pastry pasty, about the size of large wallets, filled with a filling that looks like a paste and possibly including chunks of food.

Greggs Festive Bake regular contains chicken, but why not turkey?), stuffing and bacon ‘covered in a creamy sage and cranberry sauce’. 

So we could do a side-by-side comparison with the vegan version, I set aside my principles – and we both tried one.

The pastry was crisp and the filling, however, was a bit too gloopy. Except for the chicken chunks and the sugary cranberry glaze with occasional bacon pieces, the main flavour of the pastry was bland.

I really wasn’t a fan of these, as they seemed a bit odd and fatty. 

Even so, the food was delicious: Eve and I both ate most of it, while Eve was usually averse to these types of foods. ‘I was hungry’ was her excuse.

The Quorn-and-puff- pastry offering quickly became one of Greggs’ bestsellers, responsible for a 14 per cent rise in profits that year. It was also something of a watershed moment in 2019

The Quorn-and-puff- pastry offering quickly became one of Greggs’ bestsellers, responsible for a 14 per cent rise in profits that year. In 2019, it was also an important moment.

On to the Vegan Festive Bake, a puff pastry pasty filled with ‘savoury flavour Quorn mycoprotein pieces, sage and onion stuffing balls and vegan bacon crumb, wonderfully finished with a mouth-watering sage and cranberry sauce’.

Again, the pastry was great – the butter is replaced with vegetable oils that make it slightly drier and crispier; but for a gloopy Greggs bake, it works perfectly.

It’s possibly better than the butter version, which is rather heavy. For me, this was the end of all the good points. 

There was no definition to the filling. The main flavour was sage, and I couldn’t make out the Quorn, bar the odd grainy more solid piece within the homogenous paste.

You can get ‘vegan bacon crumbles’ from supermarkets – with an ingredients list as long as your arm – and I am assuming this is what they’ve used.

I’m not a fan of this. ‘Cloying’ is the word that springs to mind. 

Eve is a meat-eater and more positive. ‘I quite like it. It’s nice. Sagey and Christmassy,’ she said. We each finished a pasty, even though it was bland.

If you’re a Greggs fan who’s gone vegan, this will be just the thing. If you’re buying one as a healthy option, I really wouldn’t bother

If you’re a Greggs fan who’s gone vegan, this will be just the thing. If you’re buying one as a healthy option, I really wouldn’t bother

Weird Science – The antibiotic that turns you blue

After his whites turned blue, a man from Australia had to be admitted in hospital.

The 73 year-old arrived at Central Coast Local Health District emergency hospital in New South Wales and was found to also have blue-tinted skin. 

A man in Australia was admitted to hospital after the whites of his eyes turned blue. [File image]

After his whites turned blue, a man from Australia had to be admitted in hospital. [File image]

Drs realized that the patient had been using minocycline (an antibiotic which can be used in the treatment of rheumatoidarthritis) for more than 10 years. 

Long-term drug use can lead to skin hyperpigmentation. This is where the patches of pigment change in colour.

In a report published in the British medical journal Case Reports, clinicians noted that the tinge had not affected the man’s sight or health.

They are nutritionally balanced. A regular Festive Bake contains 453 calories – pretty hefty for a pasty that fits in the palm of your hand.

Experts recommend that men consume approximately 2,500 calories per day and women about 2000. 

For breakfast, they recommend 400 calories and for lunch and dinner 600. The rest can be taken in snacks and beverages. Regularly consuming more means you’ll put on weight.

There’s 27g of fat, 14g of which is saturated fat, presumably from the pastry – and a bit more than a Big Mac. 

Because chicken has very little fat it is no surprise. Heart disease is linked to high-saturated fat diets.

There’s also 4g (a whole teaspoon) of sugar, and 1.7g of salt – equivalent to four-and-a-half packets of Walkers cheese and onion crisps. It’s recommended that adults consume no more than 6g of salt a day. 

Increased intake is linked to higher blood pressure which could lead to heart attacks. There’s 13g of protein, about the same as half a chicken breast.

It was filling. I’d say so. It’s not a totally fair test, as we both ate a regular and a vegan bake. After stuffing myself at noon, I was pretty content until late in the evening.

Which vegan bread is better? It’s not. 

Calorie-wise, it’s roughly the same, but there’s more fat (28g) and almost as much saturated fat (11g) – impressive, given there’s no animal fat.

Is that the source of all this saturated fat? Quorn, made from ‘mycoprotein’, a fungus, is very low-fat – 2g per 100g overall fat, and just 0.8g of saturates. 

Vegetarian puff pastry has a low amount of saturated fat. I’d say there was about 50g of pastry – the total weight is 142g, but the filling is very dense – which would mean 12g of fat overall and 6g of saturated fat. Greggs didn’t provide further details on ingredients, so it’s a mystery.

There’s almost as much sugar in the vegan bake, as well as more salt – five-and-a-half packets’ worth of Walkers crisps. 

The egg has 8g of protein. This is a little more than the boiled eggs.

If you’re a Greggs fan who’s gone vegan, this will be just the thing. If you’re buying one as a healthy option, I really wouldn’t bother.