Last year, I wrote a guide to getting a vegan flu shot (in the US), covering the science, and some of the reasons why flu shots, and recombinant flu shots in particular, are a good idea.

The science hasn’t changed much since then, but vegan flu shots are a bit easier to find. This update covers getting FluBlok, the recombinant flu vaccine approved in the US, in 2015.

What is FluBlok?

FluBlok is a flu vaccine produced using recombinant genetic techniques to grow virus with coat proteins from the flu virus in cultured insect cells, instead of in chicken eggs. This produces a flu vaccine without animal ingredients, compared to conventional flu shots, which take about an egg per dose of vaccine to produce. The science is covered in a bit more detail last year’s guide.

FluBlok is approved in the US for adults over 18 years old. Only conventional flu shots are currently approved for children.

How to find FluBlok

Most major pharmacy chains (eg. Walgreens) still do not carry FluBlok. Here are some places you can find FluBlok this year:

Target Pharmacies – The biggest change from last year may be that Target pharmacies now carry FluBlok. No appointment necessary, but it may be wise to call ahead. I had no trouble getting a FluBlok flu shot at a Target Pharmacy, but they indicated that they only had a few doses left. They take insurance, otherwise the vaccine costs around $30.

Passport Health Clinics – Passport Health offers FluBlok by appointment, also for around $30. I got a FluBlok flu shot at Passport Health last year, and this is described in last year’s article. (SF residents: Passport Health has moved to Laurel Heights since last year.)

Some clinics and smaller pharmacies may carry FluBlok. You can use HealthMap Vaccine Finder to find pharmacies that carry FluBlok. I recommend calling and asking though, as some clinics that are marked as carrying it may be out of stock, and some data may be entered incorrectly. (For instance, Pharmaca in San Francisco is marked as carrying recombinant vaccines, but I’ve contacted them twice, and they explained that their supplier does not provide FluBlok, so they do not carry it.)

Asking for FluBlok

Even pharmacies that carry FluBlok may not know it by that name. If the pharmacy you contact hasn’t heard of Flublok, try asking for the “recombinant” or “egg-free” vaccine. If you’re not sure, you can always ask your pharmacist what the manufacturer of their vaccine options is.

You may be asked multiple times if you have an egg allergy, since that is the common reason for requesting FluBlok (or the “egg-free” flu shot, as it is often referred to). You can answer truthfully, even if they ask repeatedly. They are very likely simply trying to make sure you filled out the paperwork correctly, and that you did not misunderstand the form. They are probably not trying to pressure you out of that vaccine type, even if it may seem that way.

(I was asked if I ate eggs, “even in cookies”, and I informed them that I did not, but that it was not due to an allergy. That seemed to be sufficient.)

As far as I’m aware, anyone can request FluBlok. Most insurance plans will cover it regardless of egg allergy status, and it’s only around $30 if you pay for it yourself.

Other alternatives

I’ve focused on FluBlok, since I think it’s an interesting technology, however Flucelvax is also a technology worth supporting. Flucelvax is another vaccine grown in vitro in cell cultures, rather than in eggs, for production. Flucelvax uses virus samples delivered from the CDC in chicken eggs, but does not use eggs in its manufacturing process, so the process has a tiny, but nonzero egg footprint.

Moving medicine forward

A lot of medicine is not entirely vegan. I do not recommend avoiding medicine, especially medicine with serious public health implications such as vaccines, regardless of animal product content. For instance, I recommend conventional flu shots when recombinant flu shots are not available (including for children, for whom alternatives are not yet approved).

However sometimes we have the opportunity to help push medicine forward — toward biotechnology and away from animal products. Flu shots are currently such an opportunity, and vegans should embrace and advocate for recombinant flu shots.

In addition to reducing animal use, these technologies could overcome weaknesses in the conventional egg-based process — vulnerability to changes in egg supply, long delay to ramp up production, slow response to virus mutation, inability to respond quickly to an outbreak, and losing vaccine efficacy in “reassortment” process that adapts the virus to growing in eggs.

Recombinant flu shots also demonstrate why I would like vegans to be open to biotechnology. Recombinant genetic techniques gave us insulin for diabetics without needing to take it from slaughtered animals. Current research projects may give us DHA (an omega-3 fatty acid not found in plants) in canola oil, B12 in plant foods, and even dairy made from yeast. Opposing biotechnology and delaying these projects could do real harm to animals.

One of the ways that we will reduce our use of animals is by using biotechnology to replace animal products in medicine and food. We should be open to this technology as a community, and should support biotech projects that reduce animal use.

I’ve started a new science and policy blog at veganperspective.org.

The first post discusses California’s water restrictions and why these efforts fail to consider our most significant uses of water. Check it out!

Emily and I recently had a cooking lesson with Jesse Miner, a vegan personal chef based in San Francisco. I met Jesse at one of the first vegan events I went to, and it was great to reconnect with him for a cooking class.

Jesse came to our home with the ingredients we’d be cooking with, as well as equipment in case we needed it. We cooked for several hours, then had a big meal. The menu was put together by Jesse, based on our interests and culinary skill level. The lesson introduced us to several new foods, some of which were instant favorites.

Roasted Japanese Sweet Potatoes

This was a new food to us, and they’re so good! These don’t require preparation, and can be put in the oven at 350 for about an hour, and served sliced. They keep in the refrigerator once cooked, and make a great snack, so we’ve been cooking a few at a time, and eating them throughout the week.

I brought some to work in a mason jar. Depending on how much eccentricity you’re comfortable projecting, this is either a brilliant work snack, or bizarre and shameful behavior.

Spring rolls

Spring rolls are a food we enjoy at restaurants but hadn’t made ourselves. If you use store-bought baked tofu, they’re pretty straightforward to make.

Folding them is a bit challenging. You win some, you lose some.

Umeboshi Onigiri

These are a Japanese street food. There’s a food truck in SF that sells them, which is how we’d come across them in the past. The ones we made were filled with pickled plum (umeboshi), a favorite sushi filling of Emily’s, which we’d never cooked with.

They turned out great! As with the spring rolls, we haven’t mastered making them geometrically consistent.

Korean Lettuce Wrap

This was our favorite discovery of the night. Emily and I haven’t been exposed to much Korean food, and vegan Korean food can be difficult to come by. However this was amazing.

This is a lettuce wrap (ssambap) with rice, soy curls Korean barbecue (bulgogi), and a fermented hot pepper sauce (ssamjang).

This wrap has so many flavors, and a few of them were new to me. I’d bought some soy curls ages ago, but I’d never cooked with them. Soy curls are a bit intimidating looking if you’ve never had them, since they are packaged dry, and don’t really look like anything before you rehydrate them.

The bulgogi marinade was delicious, and the ssamjang sauce, based on gochujang, a fermented pepper paste, is a very unique flavor that I was craving the rest of the week.

I plan on writing more about vegan Korean food in another post. However suffice it to say that we loved this dish, and made it twice more that week (until we ran out of soy curls).

Haupia

For dessert, we made haupia, a sweet Hawaiian dish. Haupia is made with coconut milk and corn starch, and results in a gel-like consistency. It’s a bit hard to describe, but it’s a unique dessert that we hadn’t come across on our recent trip to Hawaii, so we were happy to try some.

And more!

Other foods we cooked included a peanut sauce and a Vietnamese hoisin dipping sauce, a cole slaw using the peanut sauce, and collard green wraps using the cole slaw.

The takeaway

The cooking lesson was a great experience. It was great to prepare so many foods that are very different from what we usually cook, and it was great to get outside of our comfort zone culinarily.

Cooking lessons are a fun way to expand your culinary repertoire, and participate in the catering and chef businesses that are the heart and soul of the vegan food movement. I had a great time, and I hope to take more cooking lessons in the future.

I’m a software engineer, living in San Francisco. I recently went vegan after a few years of vegetarianism. I’m learning to cook, since I started out only able to cook stir-fry and roast vegetables.

I’ve been reading several food blogs, and figured I’d create one to share my experiences and photos of food I’ve made, or just food I’ve enjoyed elsewhere.

I have no particular culinary skill, so anything I’ve pulled off, I’m pretty confident you can too.