Healthy food finds from VegFest 2025
I had no clue how big and expansive veganism is in the Philippines until I visited the recent “VegFest 2025,” a weekend long celebration held along Paseo de Roxas, which gathered not just advocates from across the country but also delicious and healthy food and beverages. My curiosity was through the roof as I visited each stall, not just to sample their products but also to learn about their just-as-flavorful story.
Thrive & Co. (@thriveandco.ph on Instagram)
“We never want to feel limited,” says MM Vazquez, owner of the 5-year-old brand. That’s initially how she felt when her doctor told her that she had diverticulitis, a gastrointestinal disease, and needed a lifestyle change.
“As someone who loves to eat, it felt like my world was collapsing. But Haz (then-boyfriend, now husband) showed me that there’s beauty in options. Many of our products are alternatives to those who are lactose-intolerant and are generally better for your body and stomach.”
During the pandemic, with the guidance of Haz, she tried her hand at making coconut yogurt using a machine she bought online. The result was not just delicious and healthy, but also something those who were lucky to try eventually clamored for. They even requested her to develop other variants and produce bigger portions of it. She saw the opportunity for a business and that’s how Thrive & Co. was born.
From the initial flavor, she now has mango, elderflower, and vanilla in 200 milligrams (ml) or 500 ml tubs. They also expanded the line to offer coconut yogurt drinks, pea protein powders, and adlai and couscous mixes.
“We want to make our products as pure as possible, we don’t like adding any extenders or preservatives,” she says. “Sometimes simple is tastiest.”
Earth Desserts (@earthdesserts on Instagram)
When Adrienne Gawtee started her pastry brand back in 2015, she was worried that the market wasn’t big enough to sustain her business. “At that time, there were barely any vegan options in the market so I was a bit nervous about creating a brand that sold only vegan desserts and snacks.”
A nutritionist-dietitian who passed the board and graduated from UP Diliman in 2014, Gawtee thought of making healthier alternatives to cookies, while she was on the hunt for work, not knowing that the hobby would lead to a promising start-up.
She developed a double chocolate cookie using muscovado sugar, extra virgin olive oil, flax seeds, oat flour, and dairy-free dark chocolate. “Surprisingly, it tasted really good so I started selling them to close friends, and eventually even strangers were buying them. That’s when I realized that maybe I was on to something.”
Now she has an array of vegan pastries, many of which come with gluten-free options, under her brand. There is an oatmeal raisin cookie, fudgy brownies, her signature BCF (brownie-cookie fusion—brownie layer on the bottom and cookie layer on top), granola (dark choco sea salt granola, peanut butter pretzel, super berry), dark choco chia bark (dairy-free dark chocolate with nuts, seeds, dried fruits), banana bread, oven-baked donuts, and even biscuits for dogs!
Her bestsellers are the brownie brittle, tablea crisps (made with local fine tablea powder), and banana pudding (which took months of R&D since she makes her own wafers and vanilla pudding).
She relies on healthier options when it comes to ingredients. Instead of butter, she uses olive oil or coconut oil. Instead of eggs, she relies on applesauce, flax seeds, or starch-based egg replacements. Instead of refined sugar, she incorporates muscovado or coconut sugar.
Manalo Filipino (@manalofilipino)
Manalo Filipino may be one of the newest (it was officially launched October 2024), but behind it is a family-owned manufacturing and export company that has been specializing in Filipino products since 1969.
For over 50 years, Y.E.S. Export has supplied premium Filipino ingredients abroad, becoming known in the U.S. for their innovation: the individually separated lumpia wrappers. They have also been long exporting culturally rooted items like coconut products, ube, cassava, and saba bananas.
One day, Hadj Manalo, who joined the business in 2021, felt it was time to bring that same export-quality experience home. That vision gave birth to Manalo Filipino, which is designed to make Filipino favorites accessible to households here in the Philippines.
The brand began with a challenge: The U.S. FDA banned krill, which affected their bagoong exports. Instead of halting production, they adapted by introducing a preservative-free, dye-free, all-natural sautéed shrimp paste for the local market. They followed this up with bottled banana ketchup and their Turonitos, mini banana rolls filled with classic flavors like langka and ube.
“We believe that delicious doesn’t have to mean processed,” says Hadj. “Our ketchup is made with real saba bananas, giving you a naturally sweet and nutritious alternative to artificially-flavored ketchup. Our bagoong contains no preservatives or artificial coloring, just real ingredients and honest flavor. Our Turonitos are 100 percent plant-based and vegan-friendly, made with high-quality, export-grade produce. And our suman line (antala and cassava) is crafted with minimal, all-natural ingredients, just the way our ancestors made them. We’re proud to champion Filipino food that’s not only nostalgic and authentic but also better for you.”
Vaked (@vaked.ph)
As a transitioning vegan sweet tooth who came back to Bataan back in 2020, Andrea Cunanan found it hard to appease her cravings given the very limited food options in her home province. “I took the opportunity to restart my baking journey during the pandemic and had to completely unlearn, learn, and relearn all I know on baking to make all traditional breads and pastries vegan in our small kitchen. On top of the challenge, it was my personal lifestyle mission to create a healthier option since health was top personal priority at that time.”
She started with Banana Bread plus the good ol’ triple dark chocolate chip almond cookie. Her offerings eventually grew to include more variants such as matcha macadamia cookies, asin tibuok chocolate chip, and almond “crookies;” cakes like lemon lavender, dark chocolate mousse, and rosemary citrus olive oil; and breads such as vegan potato brioche, sourdough white loaf, and focaccias.
“Our goal is to have a healthier vegan option home-style breads, cookies, and cakes—while incorporating artisanal and forgotten local ingredients to also support small farmers, artisans and co-businesses,” she says.
To stay true to her promise, she doesn’t use dairy, egg, and refined sugar in any of her products. “We also give our customers options to make all our products gluten-free and only using unrefined sweeteners such as muscovado and coco sugar in our breads while using ‘panutsa’ as our main sweetener in our drinks, and clean fats and oils such as pure coconut oil and extra virgin olive oils.”
Follow the author at @fooddudeph on Instagram. For possible features, email him at angelocomsti@yahoo.com.
