"VegTimes," the nation's leading vegan magazine, uses stock photos featuring meat in its recipes

[Amerigo Vespucci]

With the help of an anonymous reader tip, the author of the vegan blog, quarrygirl.com, accused VegNews of using food images of meat in its magazine and website and passing them off as meatless. The allegation prompted the San Francisco-based publication to confess that it had, "from time to time," used stock images that turned out not to be totally animal-free.

"The pictures we've been drooling over for years are actually of MEAT!" she charged.

To support the allegation, the irate post compared pictures of recipes on VegNews.com with photographs from royalty-free image service, iStockphoto. One example shows an image of a "veganized" Brunswick stew recipe from VegNews.com and an identical image from iStockphoto titled "chicken breast-soup-stew-pepper."

"Veg News has written tens (possibly hundreds) of articles extolling the virtues of a vegan lifestyle, while purchasing rock-bottom priced stock photos of MEAT, EGGS, DAIRY and other completely non-vegan things," the post said.

In response, the magazine admitted that "Yes, from time to time, after exhausting all options, we have resorted to using stock photography that may or may not be vegan," in a plaintive letter addressing the controversy.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/15/vegan-magazine-passes-off-pictures-of-meat-as-meatless-sparking-online-debate/?hpt=T2

[phasma ex machina]

1. FWIW I'm 100% vegetarian, 99% vegan and I don't care. nt

[demwing]

4. agreed, just a photo

non issue

[bbinacan]

2. Why am I not surprised?

Every time I see a vegan post, I want a nice NY Strip cooked medium rare.

[demwing]

5. and every time I hear/read that type of comments

I think "Again? Get some new material..."

[customerserviceguy]

21. One could make the same suggestion to that magazine. n/t

[demwing]

25. please - meat eaters are in the majority

and you feel compelled to mock a minority niche?

I guess I can undersatnd your frustration, with the daily visits you get from Vegetarians and Vegans, knocking on your door, going through your fridge, spoiling all your fun, day after day after day....

I feel for ya. It must be tough to be a meat eater these days... ;)

[customerserviceguy]

37. I was simply remarking

that if the vegan magazine editors had merely tried to take a picture of the actual dish they were touting, in other words, "get some new material", then this whole thread and the story inspiring it would not have existed.

Your minority niche seems particularly sensitive about its status, you have options to cater to you in many more places than any other similarly sized minority. I'll admit, it makes me a bit fearful what you'll try to legislate should you become a large minority some day. Fortunately, that probabaly won't be in my lifetime, and I guess my grandchildren's generation will have a long time to get used to tofu burgers.

[demwing]

38. Tofu burgers..

yummmmmmmmmm :)

[matt819]

3. part of my problem with this

is that i kind of like to have a photo of the recipe to compare against my own results. if they're using stock photos, that's kind of pointless, isn't it? Now that I see this here, I can't help but wonder about other magazines, cookbooks etc.

[Liberal Veteran]

6. Ding! Ding! Ding! +1000

Have a cookie!

[freshwest]

12. Oooh! That's beautiful!

[Liberal Veteran]

14. They are chocolate chocolate chip cookies.

:)

[freshwest]

26. Er, I see tomatoes... Maybe if I meditate on them longer, I. will. see. the. cookie.

:rofl:

[Liberal Veteran]

27. It was just stock image of food-like substances.

:)

[freshwest]

29. Ah, so they were GMO, were they?

[XemaSab]

28. lol

:D

[hobbit709]

34. I've NEVER had a recipe of any kind turn ot looking like the photo.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. When there bowl of crap looks like a bowl of crap, they lie.

So unethical. They could easily have noted stock photos were not the actual dishes. But no.

[GKirk]

8. Next you'll be telling me...

...that the Statue of Liberty on the recent US stamp isn't a picture of the one in New York harbor.
(it isn't)

[GKirk]

9. Actually

"The pictures we've been drooling over for years are actually of MEAT!"

they are pixels on your computer monitor.

[freshwest]

13. And it's all an illusion anyway. Let's all relax.

[catgirl]

10. Magazines are for profit!

They could care less about your integrity.... I'm a vegetarian, and learned early on, not to subscribe to magazines. It's all about the MONEY.

Now, cookbooks are another story. :-)

[stuntcat]

18. for real

I get subscriptions to vegetarian magazines as Christmas gifts. I'd rather they give me the $14 or however much!

[MineralMan]

11. A food magazine that uses iStock photos. Really?

So, I guess they don't prepare the food they write about and have a photographer shoot it? How odd.

"Here's a great recipe for a vegan casserole. We didn't actually try making it, but we know you'll just love it...."

What kind of food magazine does that?

Uff da!

[dixiegrrrrl]

15. "contained no factual content"

[Luminous Animal]

16. Zero indication that the recipe wasn't tested.

[MineralMan]

17. If the recipe was tested, they could have photographed it.

They didn't. I rest my case.

[eppur_se_muova]

19. But but but they "exhausted all other options"!

Including, apparently, cooking a meal.

[Luminous Animal]

31. Yes. For thousands of dollars more. Obviously, you know nothing about commercial photography.

For an editorial shoot for a magazine... photographer, food stylist, prop stylist, assistants, catering, digital rendering, lighting equipment, you'd end up with a $10,000- $15,000 shoot.

I rest my case.

[MineralMan]

32. Actually, you are incorrect.

I've shot hundreds of photos for the magazines I wrote for. I've even styled and shot food photos. I have several magazine covers under my belt, mostly in the home improvement area. While some cost thousands, most do not. I was never primarily a photographer, but I shot my own photos for the magazine articles I wrote and had a complete commercial photography setup.

I also worked with commercial photographers for important articles. The cost was never in the range you mention.

Magazines for which I did cover photography: Family Handyman, Popular Mechanics, Mechanichs Illustrated, Western Outdoors, and Mother Earth News.

Don't be so quick to judge what DUers have and have not done.

[The empressof all]

20. Most food styling is done with non edible items.

http://www.foodportfolio.com/blog/food_photography/tricks_of_the_trade.html

Honestly, I found their use of photos that did not match the recipe disingenuous. Most of the magazines for food like fashion contain photos that are highly enhanced. But like with any type of advertising..... what you see is not necessarily what you get.

[Kurovski]

22. Don't eat the magazine.

[flvegan]

23. Honestly couldn't care less.

If using stock photos, while still representing the intent and final like image of the recipe, while keeping costs down is a good thing. If costs are down, then the cost for the folks that advertise in the mag should be lower. I read VegNews, and they run ads for a lot of smaller, vegan-run companies. If it's more affordable for them to run ads to their target demographic this way, then more power to them.

[tblue37]

24. *How* is this person's vegan lifestyle compromised by looking

at photos that might have unseen meat in them?

Some people freak out over the silliest things.

[Rob H.]

30. In their defense, good photography can be extremely expensive

I've been working in digital prepress for 20+ years, and it might seem like the simplest thing in the world to just snap a photo but pro photographers (good ones) don't come cheap. We had a photographer come to my place of employment this week to take around 50 employee photos, and her usual fee is around $2000 just to get her to come out and set up regardless of how long she's there and how many photos she actually takes. (She charges the same setup fee for simple product photography, too.) In the article linked in the OP, it's mentioned that VegNews is privately owned and independently funded. If the choice were down to spending $2000+ for a pro photographer versus what iStockphoto charges (in this case, less than $250 for an extended license) they'd have to be insane to choose anything other than stock photography, imo.

If we're talking about print as well as the web, there may have been deadline pressures to consider, too, depending on who's doing their printing. We often have very specific deadlines to meet in submitting our files to the printer we usually use, and if we miss that window (yes, it happens) our job(s) may get moved back and potentially mail later than we'd hoped. I've canceled subscriptions to magazines that repeatedly arrived late, so I would imagine they're trying to keep that kind of thing to a minimum, too.

[Canuckistanian]

33. Stock photo keyword search FAIL

Every stock photo has keywords embedded right into the picture. The art director must not have liked any of the veg pics.

[trud]

35. crazy as I am

I assumed photos accompanying recipes in magazines were, say, of the actual recipes. I mean it takes five minutes to snap a few photos and clip them. So, they don't even make the recipes, I assume.

[KittyWampus]

36. Do they even test the recipes?

[KurtNYC]

42. if they do -- why not photograph the results ?

good question.

[ddeclue]

39. accidental pictures of meat! how horrible!

:rofl:

[PavePusher]

40. Sign of the Apocalypse, don't ya know. n/t

[deaniac21]

41. Wake me when it's over.