Mc Donald's quandry?

[winnlovesyou]

Hello all!
So I have some friends that like to go to McDonald's to get food during lunch, and I end up going with them just because they're my friends. They, being omnivores would predictably get cheeseburgers and crap like that. However, McDonald's does have these fruit smoothies that are actually quite good, and (as far as I can tell) vegan. If that were the case (which I'm pretty sure it is), then would it still be be vegan to get that at McDonald's, even though McDonald's is cruel toward animals?
Thanks.  

[LorienLlewellyn]

According to their website, it looks like their smoothies contain yogurt and the yogurt contains gelatin. So the smoothies don't even appear to be vegetarian let alone vegan as is. But I've heard that you can ask them to leave the yogurt out. And in that case I think it would be vegan, not including any incidental yogurt that gets in there from sharing machines or whatever. It does say "CONTAINS: MILK," but I don't see milk listed under the fruit part, so maybe that's supposed to be more like the "may contain milk" warning? Not too sure. But here's their ingredient list if you want to take a look: http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/ingredientslist.pdf

But on to your next question. Is it really vegan if it supports a company that is so not vegan? That's a good question. I mean, it's not really ideal to give money to a company that's so incredibly not animal friendly. But it also can be difficult to find vegan things on the go, and if enough people order vegan things maybe McDonald's would start serving more of them? Although even if they did, I highly doubt they'd ever stop selling meat altogether...

So I guess my answer would be that it's probably not ideal to financially support McDonald's, but I don't know if I would go so far as to say that it's not vegan either, especially since the money isn't directly paying for or encouraging animal cruelty like it would be if you bought a burger.