Two kinds of McVitie's biscuits

In December, I found the famous Swedish ginger cookies were vegan. Then I wondered if there were other European vegan cookies sold in supermarkets.

In the basement of May One, a commercial facility in the building of JR Hamamatsu Station, there is a supermarket Seijo Ishii where many imported sweets are sold. The other day, I found McVitie's HobNobs on the top shelf. As soon as I saw the picture of a biscuit on the package, I recognized that it was an oat biscuit, my favorite, from its rough surface. After checking the ingredients on the label in Japanese and finding that no animal products were contained, I bought one packet home.

Oat is not so common in Japan as in Europe, so it may be difficult to find oat biscuits in ordinary supermarkets. I have often seen Swedish oat biscuits made by Gille in import grocery stores and supermarkets like Seijo Ishii, but they contain eggs. IKEA has some vegan oat biscuits, but I haven’t tried yet. So, this was the first time I tried oat biscuits without animal ingredients.

In addition to oat, they also contained whole wheat. The texture was grainy, which is something I like about oat. The biscuits were thick and had sweetness of syrup. I thought they were just the opposite to the delicate ginger cookies I had in December. I like them both though they are so different.

In Seijo Ishii, there were also McVitie’s Digestive beside McVitie's HobNobs. Since there were no animal products among the ingredients in Japanese, I bought them, too.

They were whole wheat biscuits and had a simple but good taste. While eating them, I remembered a commercial song of McVitie’s biscuits I heard a long time ago. In Japan, they have been sold by a Japanese company Meiji (Japanese versions with packages in Japanese), but I have never eaten them. According to Meiji’s website there are three kinds of biscuits sold: Digestive Biscuits, Milk Chocolate, and Vanilla Cream. All of them are made from whole wheat like English versions, but they contain milk constituents.

When I learned this, I got worried and peeled off the label of McVitie’s Digestive and read the description in English. It said “CONTAINS: GLUTAN. MAY ALSO CONTAIN MILK.” Then I checked the packet of McVitie’s HobNobs and found “May contain: Nuts, Milk, Soya.” I was perplexed and called the company that handles these biscuits in Japan. They said clearly that both of them contained milk.

I read their Japanese labels again and found a warning “In the manufacturing plant of this product, products containing milk are also manufactured.” Then I understood that contamination may occur during manufacturing.