Since popular high street baker Greggs started selling vegan sausage rolls, vegans, vegetarians and even omnivores have been raving about how tasty they are.
This last even got a tattoo of a Greggs vegan sausage roll!
But are Greggs vegan sausage rolls healthy? I did some research to find out.
While you’re here, you might want to take a look at what’s been added to the Greggs vegan menu recently.
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Are vegan sausage rolls healthy?
Vegan sausage rolls cannot be described as healthy as they contain high levels of fat and salt. Whilst most vegan sausage rolls are slightly healthier than meat-based sausage rolls, they cannot be said to be healthy food.
The most popular vegan sausage roll in the UK is the famous Greggs vegan sausage roll.
In this article, I compare Greggs vegan sausage rolls with other vegan sausage roll brands from popular shops and supermarkets, to see which is the healthiest vegan sausage roll.
Calories in a Greggs vegan sausage roll
Each Greggs vegan sausage roll contains 312 calories. That’s slightly less than a Greggs meat sausage roll which contains 327 calories.
An average woman needs to consume 2,000 calories per day. So a vegan sausage roll would be 16% of your daily calorie allowance.
If you had a sausage roll for lunch, accompanied by a plain salad, some fresh fruit and water, then you’d actually be doing just fine, calorie-wise.
However, do you do this? Or would you be more likely to have a sausage roll as a snack accompanied by a sugary soft drink? Then, it would have a high number of calories for a snack.
What are Greggs vegan sausage rolls made of?
When deciding whether vegan sausage rolls are healthy or not, it’s important to consider not just the calories but to know what Greggs vegan sausage rolls are made from.
Greggs vegan sausage rolls contain Quorn instead of pork. The sausage roll filling was made bespoke for Greggs by the Quorn brand. It’s made of a fungal mycoprotein.
Greggs vegan sausage roll ingredients:
- 96 layers of puff pastry
- Quorn vegan sausage made with mycoprotein
- A secret recipe of herbs and spices
As Greggs understandably want to keep their recipe top secret, that’s all the information that’s given.
To decide whether the sausage rolls are healthy, we’ll need to take a closer look at the nutritional information which is published on the Greggs website.
Greggs sausage roll nutritional information
This table compares Greggs vegan sausage rolls to standard Greggs meat sausage rolls:
| Vegan sausage roll | Meat sausage roll | |
| Energy (calories) | 312 kcal | 327 kcal |
| Fat | 19 g | 22 g |
| Saturated Fat | 9.3 g | 13 g |
| Carbohydrate | 21 g | 24 g |
| Sugar | 0.8 g | 0 g |
| Protein | 12 g | 9.4 g |
| Salt | 1.8 g | 1.6 g |
As you can see from the table above, Greggs vegan sausage rolls are healthier than meat sausage rolls in almost every aspect.
The vegan sausage rolls have fewer calories, less fat, fewer carbohydrates and more protein. They do, however, have marginally more salt and sugar.
Neither the meat nor the vegan sausage rolls are particularly healthy when you look a the nutrients. The vegan sausage roll contains almost half of the recommended level of saturated fat that an adult should eat in a day and almost a third of the salt.
Do healthy vegan sausage rolls exist?
So we can conclude that the Greggs vegan sausage roll cannot be considered healthy because of the high levels of fat, particularly saturated fat, and salt.
But let’s see how it compares to other shop-bought sausage rolls to see if there is such as thing as a healthy vegan sausage roll.
| Sausage roll | Calories | Fat | Saturated Fat | Salt |
| Greggs | 312 kcal | 19 g | 9.3 g | 1.8 g |
| Tesco | 319 kcal | 17.5 g | 8 g | 0.9 g |
| Co-op | 278 kcal | 15 g | 5.7 g | 0.8 g |
| Aldi | 285 kcal | 17 g | 6.5 g | 2.8 g |
| Linda McCartney (for two) | 290 kcal | 16.3g | 7.4 g | 0.9 g |
| Iceland | 271 kcal | 15.5 g | 7.0 g | 1.2 g |
| Frys | 282 kcal | 18 g | 7.1 g | 1.2 g |
| Walls | 290 kcal | 13.2 g | 6.0 g | 1.3 g |
The healthiest vegan sausage roll is the Co-Op GRO plant-based sausage roll which has 11% fewer calories than that Greggs vegan sausage roll, as well as 21% less fat and 39% less salt.
You can find the Co-Op GRO range in the chilled section of selected local Co-Op stores in the UK.
The bottom line
To conclude, vegan sausage rolls are not healthy. Yes, they are a bit healthier than meat sausage rolls, but the vegan version still has a lot of fat and salt. Greggs vegan sausage rolls are one of the unhealthiest of all vegan sausage rolls.
Vegan Sausage Roll FAQs
Greggs vegan sausage rolls are halal as they do not contain any animal products or alcohol.
Greggs vegan sausage rolls are not gluten-free. They contain wheat and barley.
Greggs vegan sausage rolls are very tasty and they taste very similar to the meat ones. The vegan sausage rolls are a little less greasy and the texture is slightly different.
Greggs meat sausage rolls have wide diagonal stripes in the pastry, whereas the vegan sausage rolls have a finer horizontal lattice pattern. The pastry is slighly paler on the vegan sausage rolls as they are not coated in animal fat.
It’s fine to eat a Greggs vegan sausage roll within 24 hours of purchase. If you plan to save your sausage roll until tomorrow, keep it in the fridge and reheat it in the oven until its hot.
You can freeze a Greggs vegan sausage roll for up to three months. To defrost, leave the sausage roll out of the freezer for an hour then heat it in the oven for ten minutes until it’s hot throughout.