Inside: Wholly veggie burger – the high protein patties made with 90% veggies and no funny ingredients.

Eat your veggies they say… and you’ll definitely want to once you try our local feature this month, Wholly Veggie. With the most delicious and nutritious packaged veggie burgers out there.

Now we know we’re always talking about prepping meals from scratch and cooking more often, but we’re also advocates of convenience. Your meal plan should be based around what works for you, your lifestyle and your schedule. This could mean eating out 4-5 times a week or buying some prepackaged food, and that is ok. If the option is between ordering a Big Mac or buying a prepackaged veggie burger that takes 5 minutes to prep, then we’re 100% with the latter. Or if you’re looking to make something at home, check out this delicious Vegan Black Bean Burger.

That’s where we come in, as nutritionists and food lovers we’re always looking out for the healthiest and most delicious options available. So, you can imagine our excitement when we stumbled upon the most delicious, and incredibly healthy packaged veggie burgers out there. What we love about these burgers is that they don’t pretend to be what they’re not (meat). Most veggie burgers you find have fillings, colourings and unnecessary ingredients to make them look and taste like meat.

Wholly Veggie on the other hand took a totally different approach by embracing the fun colours and flavours of veggies and let us tell you, they’re absolutely delicious. The best part ? Each Wholly Veggie burger patty is made of 90% veggies and no funny ingredients.

So, today we’re sitting down with Co-founder, John Bonnell to tell us a little bit more about how this Wholly Veggie Story started.

“Every vegetable has a story”

1) John, it’s such a pleasure to have you as our local feature this month. Could you tell us a little bit about your story and what inspired you and David to start Wholly Veggie?

David and I are thrilled to be included in your local feature and we really appreciate the opportunity to tell your audience a bit about our story. We officially launched Wholly Veggie in June of 2017, but the idea behind the company was born much earlier.

David and I had spent several years as co-workers in the organic meat industry. We saw every aspect from farm to table and back again, and as much as we felt strongly about the benefits of organic meat agriculture, we felt more strongly that the way we were feeding the planet wasn’t sustainable. It was shortly after David’s second daughter was born that we both seriously started discussing the world we wanted our families to grow up in. One that didn’t rely so heavily on animal agriculture to feed itself. One that saw vegetables as a greater inclusion in everyone’s meals. And one that saw kids connecting with what grows from the ground, and that doesn’t just graze on top of it. At that point, Wholly Veggie was born, and we set out with a very simple mission: get people to add more veggies to their plate by making them tasty, easy, and convenient again.

2) Our name says it all, at The Naughty Nutritionists we don’t like to place restrictions on eating, we rather focus on finding the healthiest version of the foods we love and creating balance in our lifestyles. You can say we’re on a similar mission of making veggies cool again. What is Wholly Veggie’s motto?

Our motto is simple: respect the veg. We want kids to think veggies are cool again, not just the uninvited guest to the meat party. When you spend the time to make fun, tasty meals with vegetables, you’d be surprised with how much fun it can be.

3) There are so many veggie patties out there but very few that actually taste good and have simple ingredients. How did you come up with the delicious Wholly Veggie burger patty combos?

Well, we started with the same question. Why are there so many veggie offerings out there, and why don’t they taste very good? Better yet, why are they filled with soy, gums, texture gluten, and why do they so often pretend to be meat? We wanted to peal it back. We started with a very simple idea of letting a vegetable be a vegetable. If the broccoli is green. Let it be green. Don’t change it, just make it tasty!

Exploring these questions led us down the path of creating our current products. Filled with veggies. Free of soy, gluten, or funny food science. And finally a product that doesn’t fall apart once you thaw it from the freezer.

4) What ingredients do you use to create the delicious texture and flavour, and where do you source your ingredients? Also, can you let us know about the available Wholly Veggie products?

Well, it’s actually quite simple. Each one of our products consist of 90% veggies, a pinch of egg white, and powdered vegetable and herb seasonings. Getting that texture is part of our secret sauce ;). We do get a little bit of slack over the use of our cage free egg white powder that we use. For David and I, we wanted to make the best possible product that offered a clean ingredient deck and high protein. To do that, we needed to make our patties vegetarian. While it has left us unable to make a vegan product, we do have a new and exciting line of vegan options coming out this summer.

In terms of where we source our ingredients, we work with Canadian farmers as much as possible, but due to some seasonality we have to source from the U.S as well. Our goal is to be 100% sourced entirely from Canadian farmers!

5) Tell us a bit more about the nutritional profile of the patties?

Each one of our veggie patties contains under 130 calories, has 7-9 grams of protein, are low fat and have no added sugar with the exception of Non GMO honey in our sweet curry carrot patty. All of our ingredients are Non GMO, and the small amount of starches found in our ingredients are non-modified. Clean and mean as David and I like to say 🙂

6) We know that the veggie patties can be used for burgers, what other ways can you use them? Can you share your favourite recipe with us?

We absolutely love it when we get asked this question! You can crumble them into a pasta or salad, top them with dairy free cream cheese once you pop them out of the toaster. You can make a burger, sandwich, strips for tacos and even use them as a pizza crust base to make mini pizzas. We like to tell people who see us doing demos in the grocery stores that the possibilities are endless! You can find some tasty recipes here.

7) What is next for Wholly Veggie? Do you have any new products coming up?

We absolutely do, but we’d like to leave this as a surprise. All we can say is that our next line will be vegan and we think you’ll love it!

8) Where can our readers find your veggie patties?

We can be found at most independent grocery stores across Canada, as well as Whole Foods and select Metro and Sobeys stores. The best place to find us is to visit our store locator on www.whollyveggie.com and plug in your location to find a store near you.